First of all I want to say that game is just excellent and something that I really have been enjoying. I also want to apologise for any mistakes and bad English that my post may have. I have recently been playing KCD on hardcore mode quite a lot and have noticed few things that really could use another round of balancing. Here are the major points I have noticed.
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Stat/skill cap and perks made useless by it:
As we know currently stats and skills are capped at 20. After that you will not get any new levels on them. This itself isn’t any problem at all. But the fact that this acts as hard cap which prevents any increase of stats over 20 makes dozens perks useless and doing nothing at all. I counted all perks affected by this (I did not include perks that increase charisma) and the result was 21 perks. All these perks stop doing anything after stat/skill they affect gets 20. Many times they stop doing anything even before that example if you have 3 perks that together give you +3 strength and your strength level reaches 18 you actually get +2 anymore. Also, its not just perks that are affected by this. With quick counting 6 potions lose their effect too. Also the positive drunk effect stops doing anything. Also items like spurs stop giving you horsemanship. As you see this really makes multiple things ingame quite useless and redundant after you reach this point. It takes away the meaning of you specialising your Henry. This is made even worse with things I will talk about as my 2 issue. My suggestion would be leaving cap still at 20 but making it soft cap. So these + effects can still raise your stats/skills over it. If there is danger that this would make Henry too powerful you could reduce slightly effects each point in skill/stat has. Also, let NPCs go over 20 with some hidden NPCs only buff for example. -
Too many perk points, especially in hardcore mode:
There are just simply way too many perk points you gain in each stat/skill category. You actually end up getting all perks in some trees or just missing out on 1 or 2 perks in others. This actually takes away any meaning of choosing your perks and when you combine it with issue 1 it just damages character building even more. This issue is even worse in hardcore mode. Because some perks got removed like scouting. Now the example in main level perks you actually end up getting all perks minus mutually exclusive ones. Honestly, every stat/skill should have 1 perk point removed and main level 2 perk point removed. This would actually make it matter what perks you will choose. This reduction of perks points naturally would not affect weaponskills. Because its only natural that you can learn all combos. Because there limiting factor is players skill to remember them all. But every other stat/skill should have perks points removed to make choices matter more. -
This is more of a minor issue because you guys did a good job making some perks less powerful in hardcore mode. But in my opinion you missed a few perks. In speech skill there is a troubadour perk which increases your reputation 50% women and gives you +speech with them and makes all bathhouse services free. This is really strong, perk and seriously in hardcore mode it’s even stronger. Using bathhouse gives you 100 HP, food, and energy. Basically, this perk kinda removes need to eat and sleep and somewhat even have any healing items and all this for free. Also, realistically speaking, even nobility still had to pay their whores if not in money then in gifts. Perk already has the effect of increasing reputation and speech with women so you could haggle lower bathhouse prices. So I really believe that free bathhouse part of perk should be removed. Second perk that could use tweaking is a Knight perk from Horsemanship skill. It currently gives 15% more melee and ranged damage while riding. Horse archery is kinda broken currently and so you could change perk effect only melee damage. Thematically, this also would fit perk because knights weren’t horse archers. Make new perk called Cuman, for example, that gives 15% archery dmg. So players would have to choose what he wants to specialize in. Again, this would fit thematically.
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This is just smaller observation from my hardcore play. I actually haven’t failed any speech check whole time I have been playing. Only one I failed was with Kunesh at the very start. After that I have passed them all if I remember right. Clearly some speech check could use higher requirements.
I seriously hope that these suggestions, especially 1 and 2 would get noticed and commented on. Because I believe that changes like these could greatly increase longevity of this game. Also note that all this has been thought with hardcore mode in mind.