The game has a number of bugbears though; game design concepts that were novel or just a necessity due to limitations in the 90s, are frustrating and out of line with what gamers will accept these days. Why should I only be able to carry supplies for four days? Why should there be a fixed cost to set my total to four supplies, regardless of how many I currently have. Why is repair for weapons one flat cost, regardless of how many are broken and how good the broken weapons are. In general, costs are flat and for me that breaks immersion. Maybe I'm a weird, weird guy, but when I go to a blacksmith and he quotes one price no matter how much work is involved, he's either running a scam, or he is the worst business man of all time. And further, it makes me feel like I'm wasting money fixing one dagger. Do I buy another dagger instead, or do I just leave it broken and hope I don't lose a fight by a few HP? On the topic of weapons and armour breaking, the amount of time you can spend adventuring is ridiculous. The days are so short you burn through supplies relatively fast, there's no option to stuff your packs full of supplies (they take up 0 space, but you can only carry 4) for a long trip, or for exploring, and your weapons/armour break with such regularity against powerful opponents that it drives you crazy. If you don't have or can't afford spares that are decent quality for all your armour and weapons, then it may mean you have to leave the wilderness and trek back into town (wasting time, which means wasting supplies) to repair your gear for a flat fee that bears no relationship to how many and what type of broken items you have.
Pure and simple, this may be nostalgia for players of older Might and Magic games, but I think it's rehashing some once acceptable design decision that now just seem like mistakes. What game design rationale justifies flat fees for repairs? What rationale justifies such limited camping supplies especially when damage to weapons/armour is going to force players to break off their conquests eventually anyway?
While this is admittedly early code, and there's every chance this should change, it's frustrating that it made it this far in the game design process. Games shouldn't include design choices simply because it's tradition; at one point it was traditional for RTS players to have to click ‘move’ and ‘attack’ buttons to give orders to their units. As time moved on, and contextual right (and in some games left) clicking took over. Forcing the player to click the ‘move’ button, when they can communicate that by right clicking on the ground is frustrating and pointless. Likewise, forcing players to return to base so often to replenish supplies and repair weapons is frustrating, annoying, and doesn't help them feel like they are in a magical fantasy world at all. It makes them feel like the game is gaming them, to force them to spend their gold, and reduce the speed they can accrue cool items.
