Hi baconman! Thanks for the feedback.
2. Pacing needs to be stepped up. Like, 2-2.5x the pace it is now. I feel like my characters are crawling everywhere they go.
Initially, a character's walking speed is slow, but it increases each time you gain a level. There are also some items in the game (Ghostly Boots, for example) that can increase your walking speed.
3. Seems a little on the grind-heavy side, especially for levels 10 and below. Cash vs. goods balance in the early game feels totally out of whack, and starting with $0 doesn't help that any. At least allowing them affordability for one equipment would give players a starting identity of choice to work with; and it's far better than a "choose a starting item" thing.
Basic equipment is pretty cheap to purchase from shop keepers in the starting town; leather armor costs only 10 gold, leather legs 8 gold, a small sword 5 gold, etc. A full leather set can be purchased for just 32 gold. Just smashing a few barrels (for apples, which sell for a gold each) and selling the 'Game Controls' scroll that you start off with (for 5 gold), can quickly get you that much gold. In addition to that, every monster in the game will either drop gold or an item that sells for gold.
I'd like to avoid starting the player off with gold. For instance, if a player started off with 25 gold, they could just keep recreating their character (tossing the gold on the ground each time) until they had maxed out their backpack capacity in gold (roughly 6000 gold).
4. One critical level design flaw in the early game (especially where 3-4 pointer enemies show up) is a lack of one-tile-wide corridors or tactical options like that. Sure, they're kind of boring sometimes, but they're a critical vantage point that players of these kinds of games often use to keep themselves from getting gangbanged from 4 directions at once (and you know, clearly failing at that point).
One-tile-wide corridors in a grid based MMO, where players cannot walk through eachother, is a blueprint for disaster. I've seen players try to funnel through such corridors on other games, and it usually results in trapping (or in the case of PvP) unnecessary player killing. The lack of one-tile-wide corridors is completely intentional.
Having said that, however, you can push destructible objects (such as barrels, crates, and statues) to form corridors that will funnel monsters (just know that other players can destroy these objects, if you try to block them).
5. Good, honest framework though; and never experienced any netlag. Solid tiling, movement, collision, with no breakable anomalies I've found yet. Progression makes total sense, and the game isn't a dick about it. Stick with it, you'll get there!
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