I was finally able to get forum access. I've been playing the game since about a month or two after the first EA release. I've built up a lot of feedback, so, brace yourself for a long post.
Spoiler : A little bit about me and Mordheim :
I've been playing Mordheim since I was a teenager. While most of my friends like Necromunda more, there was always something about the setting of Mordheim that drew me in. When I saw Blood Bowl by Cyanide get made, my first thought was "Mordheim totally needs a PC game." For a while when I'd google to see if it had happened, I'd see one of my posts as the top result. 
So for me this game getting made has been a dream come true. In truth I was looking for a straight Mordheim adaptation to PC, but, I can see the benefits in not just replicating what GWS did. One of the biggest reasons I'm excited for the game is the single player campaign. While Mordheim is a MP game at its heart, it's a game I've often wished I could play solo too, against an AI. I'm also a huge wuss when it comes to losing fighters in team games like this, Necromunda and Blood Bowl.
1. The setting. You guys pretty much nailed it here. It looks like a game set in the Warhammer universe and that's not always as easily said as done. More than that though, you really dialed in on the color palettes and looks that give that Mordheim feel. Greys and blues, purples and blacks, with some toxic greens thrown in. The game looks gritty, and while that's kind of become a dirty word in video game visuals the last few years, it's very appropriate to Mordheim.
2. Overall visuals. At first I was kind of overwhelmed, visually speaking, by the game with all the detail, the 3d, the combat UI...and so it took me a while to really stop and appreciate all the details in the textures, models and geometry. I run the game cranked up to max, and it really does look stunning for what it is.
Spoiler : PC specs :
i7 4790K
GTX 970
16 gigs of RAM
Standard HDD
Display at 1920x1080
The texture work is great, some of dynamic lighting is surprisingly better than I thought it would be, the models for the warbands are detailed and Warhammer Ugly. The silhouette the city makes against the sky is perfection. I want to salute the artists who took the took the time to fill the maps with weird Mordheim-y details like that dead horse tied to the top of that cart. The game makes for great environmental screenshots, and it oozes atmosphere from pretty much every corner. Sometimes literally.
3. The Level Design. If there's one thing I wanted most out of a PC Mordheim game, it was interesting and detailed level geometry that would put me in mind of the table top. And City of the Damned completely surpassed my expectations. "Gnarly" is the word that comes to me when I think of the maps, they're that detailed. The various interior rooms, multilevel houses, different tiers and heights of the map.....it is the one thing that stands out most about this game: the map designs and their execution. When I first played the Library, I was gobsmacked at how uncompromising the design was. I mean, a multi-level teleporter mad house? Not what you'd call typical. Having just come off playing a lot of XCOM: Enemy Within before I played City of the Damned the last time, I was again blown away by how intricate the maps are (granted, the terrain in XCOM is destructible and this is not.) When I got into game for the very first time and really drank in the whole map, the game got a legit "Holy shit, now that's a map" out of me. It's not just that they're really detailed though, there's a theme and a design around each one (the Library being the keynote one here.) For someone who loves maps, and spends a lot of time making maps for games, they're a delight. They're of course not without their problems (spires sticking through floors blocking doorways, stuff like that), but they have not disappointed in the least. I've got more feedback on them below.
4. Sound and Music: The ambient tracks for sound like during the main menu are appropriate. Creepy, quiet, all that good stuff. The in game battle music....not so much. It's appropriate, it's just hasn't really struck a cord with me. It's dire sounding in that sort of dramatic medieval way. I guess I just didn't expect so many trumpets and choirs chanting. Many of the sound effects for combat also sound very weak. They lack impact and the timing versus the animations seems off. (For example, if a guy is retracting their arm after striking a blow, and you're still listening to the "WHUMPF" sound, either the SFX is too long or it starts too late.) In general the SFX is one place the game could use serious work, and I hope there's a lot of stuff we haven't heard. The levels themselves lack ambient sounds as well. There's a smattering of them in there, but we could do with more crows cawing, eyeballs wetly twitching in their sockets, weird chaos flesh gurgling. Stuff of that nature.
5. Graphical Effects. This is another place the game is fairly weak in my opinion. Appreciating this is EA and that stuff might not be done yet....the effects for spells and abilities could stand to be punched up. The fog effect for levels looks great, the smoke from Oil Bombs and the fire and the heat distortion and the dynamic light it generates look great, and explosions are pretty decent. But the stance symbols on the ground, the effects for casting spells, the blood splatters on the screen simply are not at the quality level of the rest of the game's visuals. Now, maybe minimalism is a design goal and I can respect that. Big obnoxious visual effects can be overdone. But there's a difference between minimalism, and having almost nothing, or having low resolution effects paired with a high resolution environment. And before you believe I'm hating on all the visual effects work, there are some that are really good. Enshrouding Mist for the Skaven is very detailed and high resolution and looks great (live and in screenshots.) I hope more work is coming to these things because they're one of the only parts of the visuals that I have a real problem with.
6. Combat Animations. While these are generally serviceable, they feel a little flat, and something about the timing and fluidity of them feels off. Before I rebuilt my computer I would have chalked it up to some slight graphical lag making combat look stilted. But now that I've got a beefier machine, combat still feels very flat. (I still get an occasional hitch during combat animations.) It's not that the animations are bad...they just don't seem to have a lot of life in them. If you want an example of what I mean, compare the animations to those in the teaser trailer. Not only does the camera act more dynamically, giving a better sense of energy and momentum, everything just looks more fluid. I don't know if that's because the video is sped up or is a pure mock up, or what. But the combat in the trailer looks exciting and visceral even for a turn-based game. The combat I've played in the game since the beginning has never looked that good. I know the camera is a delicate subject and adding things like camera shake and what not might be opposed to it being more useful. But the animations and feeling of combat right now could best be described as "functional" but not very exciting. Between this, the GFX and the SFX, combat has the weakest feeling of any part of the game to me. There also appears to be no "combat stance" animation. More on that below.
7. General animations. I haven't played any other race but Skaven, but, generally I'm happy with the climbing/jumping/falling/running animations. If I have one complaint it's that humans look a little stiff while they run, like their upper torsos are made of wood while their legs are doing all the work. They could loosen up a bit.
8. The Camera. Oh the camera.....if I had written this feedback before update 6, I'd have some fairly nasty things to say about it. As it is, freeing up the camera went miles toward helping the player actually feel like they're part of the world instead of some disembodied head following the action. It made it easier to see what's going on, and see it in a fun and flavorful way. One of the biggest challenges for me starting out with the game was just orienting myself on the map. The improved camera transitions between actors and combats and observed enemy movement are much better, much smoother now as well. There are no longer as many jarring instances of the camera moving halfway across the level in the blink of an eye. Now you kinda see the camera quickly move which helps you keep your sense of perspective. The improvements to the camera in this update were very welcomed. I think some more work could be done with the timing of camera movements though, especially as it relates to combat. I don't know if that's as possible now that the camera is basically in the player's control all the time. Lastly, I really like the over-the-shoulder targeting camera for spells. The instant I saw that, my brain went "Omg, it's like getting a model's eye view of the table trying to see if you have line of sight!" That's a cool little touch and I hope we see more stuff like that from the camera (where it makes sense and won't get in our way.)
9. AI. The AI is....*EARLY ACCESS DISCLAIMER* not a lot of fun to play against. I've mostly been doing straight eliminate games, and the AI makes silly mistakes constantly, and doesn't really seem to play its guys as a team, or have a real plan. For example: The AI loves to climb walls, then jump down from them. It doesn't matter if one of my guys was within attack range, or if there was no one there at all, the AI will still climb...then jump back down. Secondly, it doesn't seem to understand how to consolidate its fighters when it's called for. Maybe it's just so focused on flanking that it ignores basic realities of gameplay. But when it regularly charges 1 guy into 3 of mine just waiting them for them....it tends to skew the odds heavily in the player's favor. It seems to smell weakness in HP pretty effectively though. Lastly, it doesn't seem to really level up the team to its max potential right now (I believe that's a stated known issue.) So while the game is enjoyable to play, it's not exactly a challenge or super engrossing since your opponent isn't very clever, or devious. I really hope significant work is coming to the AI, because if the game shipped with it in this state....the campaign would not be a lot of fun to play. Again, being that this is more or less intended as a MP game, I have some concern here about where the AI will end up.
10. Adaptation from Table Top. Let me start out by saying...I'm a lover of mechanically "crunchy" games. I like options, I like stats, I like stats interacting with stats. So I was both a little disappointed and a little pleased to see City of the Damned basically re-write the core systems from the table top game. Mordheim table top had a bunch of unfun problems and jankiness in the rules, it's true. That said, City of the Damned....is a pretty complex game the first time you look at it. 18 stats, basically, HP, OP/AP, plus all the derivative stats and actions like Parry and Climb. Two sets of skill types. 10 skill categories at mostly 6 skills a piece, x10 Warband members split over 6 classes, some of which are heroes and some of which are peons. It's a lot to take in even as a Mordheim vet, and I'll admit my eyes kinda glazed over the first couple times I sat down to play. It took me several matches (and skills, and being able to level up your guys) to really start to pay attention to the mechanics. City of the Damned feels like a whole new game, with the veneer of GWS's style on it. Skills also diverge pretty significantly IMO from the table top, which I'll get into later. Other than that, I feel like the game really tried to adapt as much of Mordheim to the new format as possible. From the verticality of the levels to the customization of the warband, all the additional fun extra rules like NPCs and treasures....it's about as close as I could want to an official Mordheim PC game I think.
11. Real-time vs. Turn-based. This is one of those things that puzzled me to no end until I got my hands on the game. Now that I've played it....I can see the appeal. I think it needlessly confused people to call it real-time, but the design has opened a lot of tactical and strategic doors for how you play the game, depending on your settings. With how gnarly the levels are, it makes a lot of sense too, to be able to scout things out, change your mind...but there's still the chance you can walk into a well-concealed enemy's sphere of influence and get stuck in combat, too. In any event, I appreciate the ability to set the # of take backs and the turn timer for your matches. I kinda hope I can do that to some degree in the SP campaign too, I don't like feeling rushed in games.
12. Warbands. Not much to say here, other than I like how the Skaven look and I don't mind the small changes flavor or unit changes here and there. The Skaven are a little on the big side as far as faces and bodies go, but they're appropriately ratty and evil looking and manage to capture the art and the classic styling of the Skaven well. I haven't taken the time to play the other Warbands but, visually, I like how gritty and kinda ugly they are. But I do think they need to stand out a little more. City of the Damned is a pretty drab game, and I often miss seeing an enemy against the city backdrop because their drab matches like camouflage with the rest of the game. I think this is one place where, at least for the very humanoid warbands, you could go a little more exotic and flamboyant with their styling, to make them stand out. The mercenaries are the only ones who don't blend into the environment like ninjas.
13. Warband Management. It's hard to really comment on it since it's not finished, but, I like the granularity of detail you get for upgrading guys. Again I'd point to XCOM as the simpler, friendlier squad management game and in some ways I was relieved to see Mordheim is handling things in a more detailed manner. That said, it took me 2 hours starting from scratch to completely level up and equip a warband. That is a lot of time to invest in just getting set up. It won't be that complicated to start with in the full game, but, for players completely new to Mordheim, it's probably overwhelming.
14. Skills. This is another area of the game that, had I been writing this feedback for earlier versions, I'd have some harsher things to say. Initially, skills made very little sense to me. Not in the "I don't get what this does" sense, but in the "Why is this desirable or why did someone think this would be a fun thing to unlock" sense. Now, skills are more straight forward. They provide advantages, and there's fewer of the dreaded "Do one thing good and another thing terribly" skills. This is one place City of the Damned diverged from the table top that I wish it hadn't. I'm going to get into this in more detail below, but, generally speaking: GWS Mordheim skills gave you desirable advantages that were meaningful and often restricted by race and class. City of the Damned has mildly desirable skills that give specific advantages, that everyone pretty much can access, and only at the Mastery level are they, sometimes, truly desirable. Most of the passive skills feel like fiddly "buff this activity, buff that activity" skills rather than, say, letting you ignore core rules. (For example, a chance to move through an enemy sphere of influence and not get engaged.) I get the goal is to specialize your fighters, but I don't find the current skill system does a stellar job of making that look like fun. The skills we have now are better, surely, than the original versions. But they're flavorless in my opinion. It is far less enticing to play knowing you're just going to get a +% to something you do anyways, than it is to wonder what that new ability is all about and how it can change your gameplay and strategy. City of the Damned is chalk full of the former and lacking in the latter right now.
15. Itemization. I was sort of unsurprised to see a Diablo-style loot system for the game. It's a PC game, after all, not a table top game, and PCs let you do things like have hundreds of pieces of magical gear for people to collect. PC gamers expect it. To be honest though, I was less than excited. It's just a very familiar way to handle gear and loot, and it speaks to a level of grinding in this game that is absent in the table top. It goes to how the game in SP will be paced, and while there are some good sides to that (looting an awesome piece of gear off your foe), there are downsides as well. To me, all gear looks a little less interesting when I know it's designed based on a system like Diablo. I hope some effort is spent to compensate for that by making unique pieces of gear. They don't have to be broken to be special, they just need to be handcrafted and interesting. Blue Dagger of the Thief, Purple Dagger of the Thief, Purple Dagger of the Thief + A Mark.....are all less interesting to me by default than some gear a developer actually sat down and thought about how to make cool.
16. The UI. I'm going to get a little negative on this one again. When I first started the tutorials, my reaction was "WTF is happening/how do I find anything out/where's all the UI to help me understand all this?" When I got into a real game....wow, my reaction went totally the other direction to "What in the hell is all this?" There is so much information in the UI and it dominates so much of the screen, I feel like I'm playing an MMO sometimes when it's all turned on, the screen is that full. Numbers, %s, columns, names, lists, bullet points...every formatting style out there short of tables are in that UI. It makes for an incredibly busy looking screen. And sure, you can toggle it on/off....but it could also have smaller font, more concise grouping, TOOL TIPS, and a lot of other things done to it, to reduce the amount of stuff on screen. Now that I'm familiar with the game it's not so bad, but it was an immediate turn off once I saw it. That said, I appreciate that the same font that makes up the bulk of the game text is also used for the UI, it adds a little bit of character that a straight, freely available font would not.
17. The Overhead Map. I love this thing. It so perfectly compliments the "fig level" view, and it really captures what it's like to play table top, going from the individual's perspective to the larger strategic picture. It's also completely necessary to have a clue what the level looks like, how to plan your approach and how to figure out where you are, right now. It still could use more features though to make it more user friendly, more useful and show you stuff you need to see.
18. Notifications. I feel like the game does a pretty poor job of telling you what just happened. There are several reasons for this. First and foremost is, you guys put two separate notification boxes at opposite sides of the screen. On the left it says what the action is. On the right it says what the result was. If you're paying any attention to the animations, you will likely miss one or both of these things, and the log does not capture a lot of what happens. Secondly, these notifications do not stay on the screen long enough, and they sort of pop in and out rather than fading in and out. Are they functional? Yes. Are they pretty/subtle/quality/sensible? No. Why not put the notification center screen, above the player's point of view, both the activity and the result? A second minor part of this is damage indicators. They're also flat and poorly timed. The number shoots up into the air to just disappear, it's easy to miss sometimes (was way worse in previous versions) and again it just feels like a mockup or at finished product that lacks polish. (Again, I know this is EA. If I keep repeating that it's because people are wont to jump all over it. I'm just stating my impressions here.) Damage numbers should rise, pause and then fade above the victim's head. Maybe it has a little drop shadow or something to give its edges definition, or maybe the number characters themselves need to have some actual details. In the end all I'm saying about damage numbers is, they contribute to the sense that the combat sequence is hurried and poorly timed, along with the animations and sfx.
19. Control Scheme. It's much better now that there are rebindable keys, but, the mouse is almost useless except for targeting AoE effects and out of game menus. This game has one of the oddest UX feelings of any game in my recent memory. Normally I'd say "Must be a console port" but in most other ways City of the Damned presents as a full-blooded PC game. Other places I've read and talked about the game single out the controls as one thing no one really feels comfortable with. I don't really have any suggestions here, the game is pretty far along to radically alter how its control scheme is envisioned. I'd just ask that you let the mouse play a more active roll in doing stuff where you can, please. Rebindable keys did a lot to make the game more playable though, for sure.
20. Initial Impressions. I started a thread on the Dwarf Fortress forums to gather the Mordheim faithful and....many first impressions people had were not positive. EA is EA, just to state that once again, and no one is harder to please than a fan of something that is getting remade/re-envisioned. But even setting those things aside, there were barriers to even informed players enjoying themselves. The camera making it hard to know what you were seeing/where you were. The rough nature of combat. The performance and load times (much improved now, thank you.) The overwhelming amount of information without the usual conventions for explaining or expected conventions for explaining it. The absolute metric crap-ton of context-sensitive actions every actor can take with all their red and blue pills. I know I played one game, fairly bewildered at many of the mechanical and design choices, and I didn't come back to play it for weeks after. Only after about four or five solid games did I start to go "Ok....I'm starting to get on board with this." So, as a die-hard fan of Mordheim, the game didn't immediately take with me, despite all the things it was doing right from the start. (Go back and read my first comments if you need a reminder what those were ) It did, however, show plenty of promise, and to-date I think it's living up to that promise.
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So that's part 1. Part 2 I talk a little more about concepts in the game vs. the table top, and some observations about gameplay itself.
Races v. Stats v. Skills: In table top, races pretty strictly defined a lot of things about your warband. Not just your equipment, but your skills and what things you could advance in. It had the element of randomness too. City of the Damned is a completely different beast in this regard. #1 Racial stat differences are pretty trivial, IMO. Sure, the starting values and max caps are different, but that leaves you with a whole lot of middle ground for people to be alike. In the table top, you relied way less on a slowly sliding scale of improvement. What skills you got wasn't something you could depend on, and there was more diversity in what warbands would end up with. City of the Damned, on the other hand, warbands feel a lot more generic. Everyone has access to the exact same skills, barring the small amount of racial skills we get. It doesn't cost more or less for a Skaven to beef up than it does a human. Now, I say all this playing in an EA sandbox leveling up a warband to rank 10 and going "meh I'll just spread my points around and specialize on the stats relevant to a guy's job." But even leveling from scratch, I dunno, there seems to be no "deal with what you get" and more "What do I want to make?" Which isn't bad per se. TBS computer games usually let you build your troops into roughly what you want. But I feel like part of the appeal of leveling in table top Mordheim has been lost. It's no longer a slot machine and you can't say to yourself "heheh I'll get all those speed skills other people won't be." It's seemingly easy to produce the same warband between two different races. The fact I'm not in love with skills probably isn't helping my perception of it.
Getting Immersed vs. Getting Lost: Part of what's enjoyable about the levels is no matter what angle you're looking at it from, you're not seeing something. And that something might have an enemy hidden in it. I love taking screenshots of the game looking between buildings, showing off all the walkways and tiers, because it really gets you deep in the mindset for Mordheim, crawling over the ruined city. Each little kickass courtyard or scenic vista gets you going "Yeah, I can buy that in the City of the Damned" because you know most of what you see isn't just a set piece, it's somewhere you can go. But on the flipside, all that visual immersion can come into conflict with gameplay just as much as it works with it. The common complaint I've heard in another forum is not knowing where X unit is just by looking around them (because the city textures does tend to give everything a same-y-ness looking quality), or mistakenly thinking one unit was another unit. These are all beginner mistakes but they speak I think to how hard the game be to read visually at times, and while I love the gnarly level design, it's a direct contributor to it. I'm not asking for simpler levels with easier to see geometry. But there are some things that could be done I'll mention below that could help this.
Table top wounds vs. PC wounds: This one has kinda bugged me for a while, ever since starting the game. In Mordheim, combats are quick and lethal, usually. Most guys get that one wound and then you're probably out of the game, barring an armor save and wound roll. Combats in City of the Damned feel....kind of slow and plodding. Part of that is the combat animations and timing and such, but the other part is the wounds. Everyone, even Skaven, feel like they have a crap load of wounds. It can take two turns of two guys wailing on one to kill them, even with the occasional crit thrown in there. It feels, even for turn-based melee combat sims, slow. It's not that dedicated melee fighters don't hit harder and eat more damage....it's just they do that on top of an already solid base of HPs most people have. And once you're at Rank 10.....killing your opponents feels more like felling a tree than a person.
All Dat Map, no one in it: I've played most of the deployment scenarios at this point and most of the time, the game comes down to me blobbing in the centerish of the map until the AI finds me and gets wasted. Doesn't matter whether you're starting from the wagon or scattered. I'm not saying this is especially different than table top, but, a lot of the map seems to go unused. I know this will get better once persistence and capturing wyrdstone for fun and profit becomes a real thing. But I'd like to see more of the map get used, and not just the 20% you spend the bulk of the match fighting in. The AI has a big part to play in making that happen, but better procedural generation to achieve that aim has its part too.
Racial Skills: I think this is an underused skill group in a game full of tons of skills in every other category. If you really want to differentiate the races, I would lean on these harder than it seems you are now.
Magic System: I'm sort of mixed on it. There aren't a lot of spells I've seen with Skaven that have blown me away, and while I find the Tzeentch Curse flavorful and get why it's there to limit magic, I think it's poorly explained at the moment, and sort of going back to my complaint about notifications, poorly demonstrated in game.
AP/OP: Movement is really important in Mordheim so I get why there are two action pools. But it gets a tad confusing, especially for a new player, when skill requirements cross both pools, or things like weapons and tiring reduce how many actions you can take. There is no substitute for taking your time, reading, understanding your skills and equipment but....perhaps the debuff notification could say something like Tiring: -1 (Offensive Point Symbol.) I think those symbols need to be used where ever possible so players can visually focus on the pill cost at a glance.
Armor: I feel like the bonuses and trade offs for armor aren't super well explained either. How badly it hurts your movement, hurts your climb and jump chances, how much damage mitigation it provides. It's not that the information isn't there. It's just not centralized in one place for the player's convenience.
Weapons: Similarly, I feel like weapon properties are easy to forget about, and wish there was an easier way to see all this stuff. I think you ahve to switch weapons to actually see the secondary effects of it, unless there's some other method I'm missing. Suggestions below.
Chance to Stun/Chance to be Stunned: I still have no idea where to find this information.
Arrows! I love how arrows stay stuck in a fighter for the whole game. A nice touch. It's also quite funny when they have hundreds of hit points, so they have to be pin cushioned before they'll die...
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Part 3. Suggestions & Desires, rapid fire style.
Overhead Map: Perhaps cut down on the fog while in that view. While it's cool to see fog banks moving across the overhead map, it defeats the purpose of the map by obscuring stuff you want to see. It doesn't need to go away, it just needs to be less opaque.
Overhead Map: Rotate function please. It doesn't seem like an insurmountable technical obstacle. I understand if this is a specific design choice (like you're a player on the south side of the table who isn't allowed to walk around to the other player's side) but it'd go a long way further toward informing the player about their environment. I'd also appreciate a higher zoom level.
Overhead Map: Highlighting icons so you can read what they are, especially stuff inside buildings, is very finicky right now. Sometime it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Overhead Map: Add a key to bring up a legend of what the icons mean. It reduces the need to mouse over stuff just so you can remember what it means.
Icons & Symbolism: I think it would be wise to go back over your unit and interaction type icons, and maybe the stat icons too, to evaluate them for readability. Some of them clearly indicate what they're meant to mean. Some, like looting icons vs. wydrstone, are less clear because they're more abstract. Runic looking symbols are cool and flavorful and all, but not at the cost of readability.
More Ambient Level Sounds: Self-explanatory. There's a lot of weird stuff that would be cooler if it made noise. Like it'd be cool to hear scummy water lapping at the canals in some maps. I admit I have not played all the maps
More atmospheric effects for maps: I don't doubt there are more planned, but I hope we see more atmospheric effects besides just fog. Clear days (as clear as they get in Mordheim) would be nice, rain of varying levels and intensity, storms, crazy warp light, crazy warp storms, crazy warp lightning storms, creepy poisonous green vapors, smoke and fire.
TOOL TIPS: All caps because this game lacks them, and it's a contributing factor to why there is so much text on the screen and 5 different overlays when you're actually playing. Half of people's informational struggles would be solved by tool tips. "What's my weapon do?" Tooltip by hovering over the weapon name in the lower left. "What's affecting this fighter?" Hover over the fighter with the mouse to pop up the debuffs tool tip. "What's this ability do?" Hover over the ability icon in the bottom center to get the full description in a tool tip. "What's this symbol mean?" Hover over the symbol. If you need to, add a modifier key like shift or something to free the mouse cursor up from camera control so the player can point around at stuff when they need to. I get you guys want to make this an easier port to consoles should that happen....but it's a PC game primarily and the distinct lack of tool tips in game (when Warband Management has them, although you have to click on them) is telling. Right now the game has all the complexity of a PC game with a lot less of the usability. There is only so much info you can cram on to the screen and it already feels like it's at its limit to me. Consider also that, players basically have to learn and memorize like 20 symbols as the short hand for what everything means, because there are few to no tooltips accessible in game. It just adds to the bewilderment people feel trying to remember all the inputs in this pretty complex game.
Stat Breakdowns On The "Skills" Menu Page: You hit Space Bar to go to your skill wheel and see skill descriptions. But there's unused space there, and it'd be a great place to put stats like "Total armor/Total mitigation/sources contributing to armor/detailed buffs and debuffs/expected damage per weapon/expected # of attacks per round per weapon/weapon effects/leap chance/jump down chance/dodge chance/parry chance/etc...All this information is spread around the UI in game, if it's there at all. Put it all in one place. Make THAT a place for all the tool tippery.
Handcrafted Loot: While it's probably far too late to change away from Common --> Magical --> Epic loads of randomly generated gear, I hope that a good amount of effort can be put into stand out pieces of hand crafted gear at all levels of rarity, and not just the super mega rare stuff. Gives the loot system that personal touch.
Better Notifications: They need to do more to catch the eye, and possibly moving them from the sides of the screen to the center is better than anything else. Maybe they need a slight sound effect like a paper page turning, or something, to alert the player.
Better Damage Display: A drop shadow on the numerals, slowdown the movement, maybe add a subtle animation to it. It feels weightless, although other things are probably contributing to it. Maybe a little red wisp comes off of it, sort of like Mordheim sucking up the soul of the victim as you spill their blood.
Combat Stance Animations: Characters in combat have the same stance as when they're not in combat. That seems weird to me for a game that's so focused on melee combat in full 3d. They should have their weapons up, their bodies doing the combat roll of the shoulders and hips, ready to strike or dodge. Yet another contributing factor to combat not really being sexy right now, because both teams stand around looking like they're waiting their turn to be hit.
Meatier Combat Camera: Add a little camera shake or a little dynamic movement if it's possible. Together with better sounds combat would feel more exciting than it currently is.
Better Graphical Effects: Spells and abilities mainly.
Lower OP Skaven Ranged Weapons: Blowpipes, Shurikens, Slings. Warplock pistols are kind of an elite weapon, anyways.
Better Skills: Don't stop refining and rethinking some skills, especially baseline ones. Think less "make some activity someone already does marginally better" and more "create a new activity or allow the skill to break some rules." Wall Runner is an example of such a skill. It's not inventing something new, but it's actually changing the rules to give an advantage, like ignoring OP/AP cost, instead of just "+5% parry chance" or what have you.
Consider More Dramatic Stat Requirements For Skills: The goal being, racial maximums should influence how you build your warband more than they do, as everyone can hit the same relative stat level with ease, and end up with access to all the same stuff.
Alternatively, Racial Modifiers When Buying Stats: Say Skaven pay 2 for 1 to get strength, but 1 for 2 to get Agility. Expand this thinking to the other warbands. The goal again being getting warbands that behave differently because they invested very differently.
More/Better Model Skins, More Color Options: I seriously cannot tell the difference between two of the skins, and the Warts on the Skaven aren't very noticeable. Not that I'm particularly attached to Warts, I just had to squint to notice a difference. I do really enjoy the color options though, and the fact we can spin and zoom the model!
The AI Needs To Know When To Group Up, And When To Scatter. It seems to only belatedly send its guys into the combat I've arranged after I've killed or nearly crippled one or two of their guys. Maybe it's not sensitive enough to the victory conditions, or it has no scripting yet written to do anything other than fan out across the map after the game starts. But it's a pretty predictable and flawed opponent right now.
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I think that's most of my feedback for now. I'm most looking forward to persistent warbands and wyrd stone smuggling. It's the last element of the game I need before I start plugging some serious time in. Anyways, all in all, I think the game is more or less already a success in its current form. It just needs content plugged in, some ideas tweaked some more, the campaign created and a couple thousand hours of polish I've got plenty of gripes but they're not enough to stop me from playing, and I'm truly starting to get immersed. Keep up the good work!
Statistics: Posted by Nenjin — 22 July 2015, 06:20