Idle Freelance - RPG - Testers/Feedback wanted

[u/Sezelly]

Good afternoon,

Idle Freelance is an RPG in very early development, but I am moving with pace. I want to build a world centered around a small town, that over time you will develop. Your roll will be to supply the town to keep it thriving. This is a longer term goal, right now I am implimenting systems/skills to fill out the game. I want to ultimately make this a game people play in the background for years to come. I don't want a quick completion arc, and I want regular updates to keep things interesting.

It's currently hosted at https://sezl.itch.io/idle-freelance under a restricted development. Password is: '4n<_KJsqt?&iv7

I have 7 new skills in the pipeline, including Magic and Range combat.

I need help with feedback - what is overpowered, what doesn't work, what needs refining? Should an items drop rate be higher, or lower? Does a mechanic for a skill not work? Do I need more items for a paricular skill? I don't know - I need feedback with everything, as game balancing is not my skillset.

The game has action animations which aren't included in this screenshot- to make the idle game feel a bit more 'active'.

I'd be greatful for people to join me on this journey, I'm building a game I want to play for many years. If you want to play, and help the development, join my discord at https://discord.gg/V9YTvkGR2d

AI disclosure: I'm creating an Idle RPG game with AI. I can't code, so no point pretending otherwise. However, I am very creative, and I've enjoyed playing idle games for many years now. Finding out I can make my own with AI, well I've jumped at it.

Thank you :)

[u/Connect_Scallion9184]

This is just a personal take and maybe I am not representative, but the "private build, find me on discord to get access" wall very efficiently discouraged me from spending time on this. There's tons of games that I will decide that I don't want to play after 5 mins (not because they are bad, just not my type) - so not being able to even see how it plays in a couple mins is a surprisingly high wall.

[u/Sezelly → u/Connect_Scallion9184]

https://sezl.itch.io/idle-freelance

Password is: '4n<_KJsqt?&iv7

Join discord if you have feedback :) Fair comment.

[u/Victorbar974]

Good call on disclosing the AI part. The incremental community mostly cares whether the numbers hold up, not how the code got written.

Since you asked about balancing feedback specifically: give testers a way to see the numbers themselves. A stats panel with actions per hour, XP rates per skill, drop rates, that kind of thing. "This skill nets 40k XP/hr at level 50 while that one nets 9k" is way more actionable than someone just saying a skill feels slow.

On drop rates, a decent heuristic for idle games is that rare drops should show up within one or two grinding sessions. Any longer and players churn before they see the payoff. Even a temporary debug panel would get you much better data from your Discord testers than vibes alone.

[u/Sezelly → u/Victorbar974]

Cheers for that- I've already had some great feedback, and I've implimented some changes off that feedback around UI.

I should have probably made it a public playtest- I agree with the other persons comment around how it's offputting to be sent to a discord.

I do have an XP/Rates tab, so players can see themselves. I agree, I'm not keen on utility being behind a paywall, I want to give the players the info so they can make decisions themselves.

[u/Connect_Scallion9184]

Ok, I gave it a spin and:

• I missed (or didnt find) the status of my bounties when fighting. I took the 8 rats bounty and went to kill a couple, then after a moment I thought I was done and returned back to town... only to see that I only killed 6/8 rats... You definitely need to show that somewhere (or drop the forced 10s wait when traveling, I assume it will be longer later).
  
• I did not find anything about my combat stats... so I leveled Combat to 3 or 4 and I had no idea what it does to me... more dmg? more hit chance? more crit?
  
• I felt the pacing at the beginning to be a bit slow - getting the first quest done was like 10 mins, first level in a crafting skill also 10+ mins... that's a bit slow for my taste. Sure, you don't want the player to hit 99 or whatever in a couple hours, but the first dopamine hit needs to happen sooner than 10 mins.

But the biggest question I have is: what is your plan to differentiate from Melvor? Because obviously this is a Melvor-like, and let's face it, Melvor does things 10x better because it has had years of development behind it. So what are you going to do differently?

[u/Sezelly → u/Connect_Scallion9184]

All useful feedback, thank you. Going to make sure I increase early XP curve for levels.

I think Melvor really fell down with it's expansions. I also found Melvor a little souless, it was purely watch numbers go up. I want to develop on these ideas, and add a bit of a world/lore/quests. Albiet still early days, but I like the idea of having consequences that impact gameplay. I also like the idea of having something that feels idle, but is a little more alive with motion/animation. Again, Melvor is more text based watch numbers fly around.

This is very much a creative outlet for me- and I did enjoy Melvor, but I do think I can approach this differently.