Author Topic: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!  (Read 6718 times)

Offline x4000

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #15 on: January 27, 2012, 02:18:57 pm »
To break a vase to get clay just requires you to go to the building in question, whether or not it's in a mission.  In fact, most missions don't have buildings of the sort that would have vases at all, so it's far easier to do that outside of missions.  All of the non-rare-commodities are generally best found via exploring on your own outside of missions.
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Offline freeformschooler

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #16 on: January 27, 2012, 02:24:58 pm »
I realize that, but the reference compendium says the overlord's forces have to be T2 or higher, and I haven't found any T2 or higher spaces outside of missions or lieutenants...

Offline BobTheJanitor

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #17 on: January 27, 2012, 02:30:05 pm »
it's kind of hard to have any meaningful combat when everything is one hit kills; it's just a reflexes game then.

Oh, I don't know. You can get as much combat out of fighting ten 1-hitpoint enemies as you can fighting one 10-hitpoint enemy. I suppose it depends on what defines 'meaningful combat' in this context. Fighting a bunch of enemies that feel like bullet sponges can be less than gratifying. I'm feeling this especially lately, since I just played through Star Wars Republic Commando (fun game, but so many bullet soaking bad guys) and Duke Nukem Forever (avoid avoid avoid avoid) which both suffer from this problem. Then I went back and played Painkiller, and popping bad guys in one shotgun blast was just so gratifying.

It doesn't feel like the enemies in AVWW are too far along on the sliding scale of damage absorption right now, though. So this is more of a hypothetical situation. Although I wouldn't mind the bats being one hit kills. Flighty camouflaged little jerks...

Offline Hyfrydle

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #18 on: January 27, 2012, 02:35:28 pm »
Have the character animations been changed in the latest build? My character seems to be running and a double image appears as I move.

This seems to be more noticable inside buildings.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2012, 03:05:31 pm by Hyfrydle »

Offline x4000

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #19 on: January 27, 2012, 03:26:54 pm »
I realize that, but the reference compendium says the overlord's forces have to be T2 or higher, and I haven't found any T2 or higher spaces outside of missions or lieutenants...

Oh, I see.  Once your EP gets high enough (>=200), then everything is T2 on that continent.  You pretty much have to wait until then to be able to craft those things.

it's kind of hard to have any meaningful combat when everything is one hit kills; it's just a reflexes game then.

Oh, I don't know. You can get as much combat out of fighting ten 1-hitpoint enemies as you can fighting one 10-hitpoint enemy. I suppose it depends on what defines 'meaningful combat' in this context. Fighting a bunch of enemies that feel like bullet sponges can be less than gratifying. I'm feeling this especially lately, since I just played through Star Wars Republic Commando (fun game, but so many bullet soaking bad guys) and Duke Nukem Forever (avoid avoid avoid avoid) which both suffer from this problem. Then I went back and played Painkiller, and popping bad guys in one shotgun blast was just so gratifying.

It doesn't feel like the enemies in AVWW are too far along on the sliding scale of damage absorption right now, though. So this is more of a hypothetical situation. Although I wouldn't mind the bats being one hit kills. Flighty camouflaged little jerks...

Some things being lower-health like that is good, I agree.  It's good to have a range.  But the difference in concentrating all your power into one enemy versus into ten enemies is that the enemy actually gets a chance to act before dying.  This is assuming that enemy density is vaguely in the same ballpark either way.  If you're getting 2 enemies at a time, and both are 10x weaker than one enemy that you fight, then -- bam, bam, two shots and they didn't have time to do anything interesting.  The only thing that varies from enemy to enemy is mostly the art, because they hardly get off a shot. 

Whereas if you're getting swarmed by 10x of those 1/10th strength enemies, then sure -- they all have plenty of time to act.  But now they ALWAYS have to appear in huge volumes or they are ineffectual.  And if they are appearing in huge volumes... then you can't dodge them.  So either they need to be doing almost no damage, which makes them pointless and reduces the need for tactics, or the player needs to have hugely powerful AOE effects which gets you back to the point of them being one-hit kills and not really threatening you much.

This is why I say there's not much room for strategy there.  It takes out all ability or need to maneuver for position.  Versus when there's only a couple of enemies, and they do a lot of damage to you, and they take several hits to kill... then you and the enemy both have time to move around and actually think about what's going on.  There's little enough chaos that you actually CAN maneuver and dodge to get a superior position in some fashion, and so on.

The best situations are when two or three such enemies gang up on you, as that really can make for some tricky tactical situations to figure out.  You just don't get that with clouds of weaker enemies, which I feel confident in saying given that's how the game used to be. :)

Have the character animations been changed in the latest build? My character seems to be running and a double image appears as I move.

This seems to be more noticable inside buildings.

Nothing intentional, no.  I'll have to see if there's some sort of odd bug.  Is this in solo or multiplayer?
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Offline Hyfrydle

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #20 on: January 27, 2012, 03:34:01 pm »
Quote
Nothing intentional, no.  I'll have to see if there's some sort of odd bug.  Is this in solo or multiplayer?

This is on my old world in singleplayer.

Offline x4000

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #21 on: January 27, 2012, 03:34:42 pm »
That's really odd... we can't duplicate it here, so not sure what is going on.
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Offline Hyfrydle

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #22 on: January 27, 2012, 03:36:43 pm »
I'll test it on my newest world and see if it makes any difference.

Offline x4000

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #23 on: January 27, 2012, 03:37:04 pm »
Okay, thanks.
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Offline freeformschooler

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #24 on: January 27, 2012, 04:14:12 pm »
Hmm... last question, I think: why do the Guardian Stones not heal you past 100% with the health re-balance? I am interested in all these design decisions as game design is one of my favorite subjects, and I've learned a lot from your answers so far. The guardian stone thing is strange because is encourages constant dungeon-delving to find infinite amounts of Vitality Stones in stash rooms to increase your HP from 230% to 330% (which can't, in turn, be healed to 400%) before it suddenly reaches <200% and you're back to up to 100% HP, causing you to be forced to spend even longer searching for Vitality Stones, and so on...

Offline x4000

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #25 on: January 27, 2012, 04:26:04 pm »
Hmm... last question, I think: why do the Guardian Stones not heal you past 100% with the health re-balance? I am interested in all these design decisions as game design is one of my favorite subjects, and I've learned a lot from your answers so far. The guardian stone thing is strange because is encourages constant dungeon-delving to find infinite amounts of Vitality Stones in stash rooms to increase your HP from 230% to 330% (which can't, in turn, be healed to 400%) before it suddenly reaches <200% and you're back to up to 100% HP, causing you to be forced to spend even longer searching for Vitality Stones, and so on...

Some players tend to try to play in whatever way is "optimal," no matter how un-fun or destructive to themselves it is.  Thus if they are about to lose a vitality stone threshold, and they can just warp back to town at the some time cost to themselves, they'll do it and then complain about it.  On the other hand, if the only way to keep your vitality stone levels up is to actually defeat enemies in the field, then it rewards skill and staying in the field instead of running back to town.

Likewise, it encourages the choice of "do I save these vitality stones and then get back to the level I'm at once I lose it, or do I save up for the next level?"  That doesn't really come into play if losing health levels isn't something that actually is a risk.  Plus then you would get players who had insane amounts of health, and who were worried about taking any damage at all because it would drop them from 1600% to 1500% and they'd have to collect 1024 more stones or whatever.  The goal is to make it so that there's enough loss of health tiers that players never get above a few hundred percent most of the time, and that the lowish volume of stones they are finding are used to replenish that value and occasionally get a buff above it.  Rather than it being something where it climbs ever higher and eventually the player can't be killed at all.
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Offline freeformschooler

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #26 on: January 27, 2012, 04:41:41 pm »
That makes sense. I hadn't thought about it at all in that perspective.

In some way, like everything in the new releases, skill comes out on top: do I change my playstyle to avoiding all of the boss' fireballs as opposed to charging in and taking it down? If I want to stay above 100% health, the answer is "yes". I suppose it also discourages heavy grinding to get to 1 bajillion HP. Thanks for the answer!

Offline KDR_11k

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #27 on: January 27, 2012, 04:44:21 pm »
It seems the dropping of stuff is tied to the EP tier, not the tier of the area you're in. Entering a chunk with a lieutenant won't let you get stuff that would usually drop at T4.

The battlefields are kinda static and dull ATM, especially since you can hide behind allied monsters and let them soak up the damage for you. If you don't do that then you'll have trouble telling friendly from hostile projectiles. Okay, the one battlefield I fought so far was skelebot snipers and dwarfs, guess that's extra static. They just line up like Civil War riflemen and shoot at each other.

There's a type of game with sidescrolling battlefields that does it pretty well (the most complete description is available for Armor Alley) but that kind of complexity might be out of scope for AVWW.

Offline x4000

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #28 on: January 27, 2012, 04:49:26 pm »
That makes sense. I hadn't thought about it at all in that perspective.

In some way, like everything in the new releases, skill comes out on top: do I change my playstyle to avoiding all of the boss' fireballs as opposed to charging in and taking it down? If I want to stay above 100% health, the answer is "yes". I suppose it also discourages heavy grinding to get to 1 bajillion HP. Thanks for the answer!

My pleasure!  And yep, we're trying to always reduce the incentives for grinding in particular.

It seems the dropping of stuff is tied to the EP tier, not the tier of the area you're in. Entering a chunk with a lieutenant won't let you get stuff that would usually drop at T4.

Hmm, that would be a bug... let me see if I can find that.  The enemies are T4, though, right?

The battlefields are kinda static and dull ATM, especially since you can hide behind allied monsters and let them soak up the damage for you. If you don't do that then you'll have trouble telling friendly from hostile projectiles. Okay, the one battlefield I fought so far was skelebot snipers and dwarfs, guess that's extra static. They just line up like Civil War riflemen and shoot at each other.

There's a type of game with sidescrolling battlefields that does it pretty well (the most complete description is available for Armor Alley) but that kind of complexity might be out of scope for AVWW.

The battlefields are in an early, relatively simple state at the moment.  When you get more enemy types in there it can get kind of crazy, though.  There's a limit to what we can do with them pre-1.0, but if folks are interested, then we'd also be interested in putting in a lot more stuff there.  That's definitely Keith's side, though.
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Offline KDR_11k

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Re: AVWW Beta 0.563 "Migratory Battlefields" Released!
« Reply #29 on: January 27, 2012, 05:07:32 pm »
Yeah, enemies are T4 and very hard to kill with my T1 gear but when I break copper veins nothing spawns.