AVWW Post-Release 1.019-1.020 "Streamlined Continental Progression" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/05/avww-post-release-1019-streamlined.html

This one is definitely our largest post-release update so far in terms of how it affects the overall feel of the game.  The loot drops from enemies plus the opal guardian's store was also pretty huge, but this is bigger.

First off, the smaller stuff: a variety of bugfixes and tweaks, and some new graphics compression options that may or may not be of interest depending on how much RAM you have and if you tend to play for hours and hours at a go.  And a few other neat things like "Small Rare Enchant Containers" that you can find out in the wild.

Streamlining?
The larger changes are all noted in detail here.  Essentially, what we've done is removed "Civilization Progress (CP)," and instead made it so that you kill lieutenants in order to increase the continent tier.  In short, we took out one mechanic that was a bit superfluous and complicating things needlessly, and are now making better use of a more interesting mechanic (lieutenants) to accomplish the same thing.

Another way to look at this is focused around missions themselves: you no longer have to worry about world map missions accidentally making the world arbitrarily harder (through CP) by completing too many of them.  And the secret missions are no longer so grindy by giving you fewer rewards than the world map missions -- both kinds of missions now give you the same, higher, resource rewards.

Yet a third way of looking at this is in terms of overall game structure: previously you would bounce back and forth between missions and free exploration, then eventually kill all the lieutenants and the overlord pretty much in one long string.  Now you bounce back and forth between missions and free exploration for as long as you like, then take on the lieutenant of your choice, then keep improving your stuff until you are ready to take down the overlord.  Much better flow, that.

Strategic Difficulty Returns
Right now the strategic difficulty setting only affects one thing: how many tier orbs of each tier you can accumulate per continent.  However, as we go further into post-release content there will be other things we do with this.

One of the cool things about CP and tier orbs being tied to one another in the prior system was that it forced an opportunity cost on you: you had to be efficient.  The downside was, not everybody wants to play that way.  And for those that do, it was not forcing that difficult of choices, really.

The strategic difficulty setting lets you choose how constrained you want to be: how much you want each unlocked spell to matter in terms of your overall strategy to defeat the overlord.  Just like players have differing feelings on how hard the platforming and combat should be, so too has it become clear that players have different feelings on how hard those long-form decisions should be.  This lets you set it to whatever is most fun for your particular tastes.

More to come soon.  Enjoy!

UPDATE: 1.020 is now out with a fix to the anachronism missions spawning crazy numbers of enemies in the prior version.  Part of why I did the 1.019 release in the middle of the day was in case there were some severe issues that people found; I didn't want them going overnight if I could help it.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 0.500 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have 0.500 or later, you can download that here.

[mrhanman]

Awesome! I can't wait to get home to try it out. 

[Vinraith]

Very cool. What's the impact on existing games that are already at some higher tier, but have yet to kill a lieutenant?

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Hmm, I like being unrestricted from missions. I am curious how this will work out when I play later tonight .

(cant wait for my code to work on Steam as well!)

King

[Nethellus]

For some reason the region map is always on. This means that for areas where you have explored a lot, it will really be in the way, obscuring your health, mana and parts of you hotbar, depending on how tall the dungeon map is.

Having to turn my shields back on every single time I enter a door is really annoying, but I guess I can get used to it. Now that we have to do that, it could at least be made to not remove the invincibility.

If the shields do have to be removed in area transitions, how about refreshing them instead? Turning them off when the area changes and turning them on again if you're entering a normal area and not a JtP mission for example.

[Bluddy]

I'm really glad the restriction on tier orbs was put in there! Together with another slider which I think is a nice touch too, though I'm concerned that some people might like many spells with no connection to the other strategy elements that might follow.

Right now it seems like buildings are unrestricted per tier, and maybe there should be some way to deal with that. I'm not sure you want to set up a building vs spell zero-sum game again. At this point, buildings aren't nearly competitive enough for that. Perhaps rather than limit the tier orbs arbitrarily, you can only fill up certain types of buildings (mage towers or the like) with spells. Upgrading certain buildings will upgrade the spell slots, and upgrading other buildings will do some other crucial strategic things.

Anyway nice update -- can't wait to test it out.

[x4000]

Very cool. What's the impact on existing games that are already at some higher tier, but have yet to kill a lieutenant?

The continent goes back down to the lower tier, but you keep all your higher-tier stuff.  So you're going to be seriously overpowered for a bit, until you kill some lieutenants; but at the same time, it's not going to be something exploitatively overpowered because of the tier orb caps.  In general this works in your favor so that things are just a little extra easy for a while until they balance out.  I figure that the bulk of people would fit the description of being on tier 2-3 without having killed any lieutenants yet, so to go the other way would be just plain mean!

For some reason the region map is always on. This means that for areas where you have explored a lot, it will really be in the way, obscuring your health, mana and parts of you hotbar, depending on how tall the dungeon map is.

That's not a change in this version; it sounds like you bumped the period key.  Or comma, I forget which it is.  Just press it again and you're all set!

Having to turn my shields back on every single time I enter a door is really annoying, but I guess I can get used to it. Now that we have to do that, it could at least be made to not remove the invincibility.

The shields are meant to be run for a second or two at a time in the first place.  How long are you running them for where this is even an issue?  And why would you want your shield on without it removing the invincibility if that's draining your mana the whole time?  I'm just trying to understand the use cases here.

Turning them off when the area changes and turning them on again if you're entering a normal area and not a JtP mission for example.

The shields are really meant to be used for blocking a single shot, not for something that provides loads of protection over a long period of time.  But it sounds like you've found a way to do the latter, which is I think the disconnect.  We had thought about doing a different sort of shield that was more of an "until depleted" sort of thing, and that would persist across areas and so forth.  But this is meant to be more like a quick block; I have a feeling that they've drifted, though, because we've rebalanced some other stuff and I don't play with the shields and so wouldn't notice alterations of that sort unless we thought to test them or somebody brought them up.

I'm really glad the restriction on tier orbs was put in there! Together with another slider which I think is a nice touch too, though I'm concerned that some people might like many spells with no connection to the other strategy elements that might follow.

Glad you like!  Yeah, I wasn't keen to lose the opportunity-cost style of play either.  In terms of wanting to have many spells but no other strategic things reduced, I think those are inherently at odds based on my time with AI War.  If you can "choose everything," then there's not really much strategy to the choice.  I also really want to avoid a situation where we get ridiculous numbers of lobby options for starting a new game -- the ones we have already are about 2x what I'd wanted in the first place.  Anyway, right now it's a bit academic because the exact things we plan to use the strategic difficulty for beyond this I'm not sure.  We always knew we were going to reintroduce it, and goodness knows we have a lot of ideas that sound good on paper, but we'll have to experiment and see what ones sound good in practice.

Right now it seems like buildings are unrestricted per tier, and maybe there should be some way to deal with that. I'm not sure you want to set up a building vs spell zero-sum game again. At this point, buildings aren't nearly competitive enough for that. Perhaps rather than limit the tier orbs arbitrarily, you can only fill up certain types of buildings (mage towers or the like) with spells. Upgrading certain buildings will upgrade the spell slots, and upgrading other buildings will do some other crucial strategic things.

To be honest, I'm not really fussed about that.  I don't see the buildings as-implemented as being a heavy strategy component.  Those are more to scratch the citybuilding itch a bit, and to allow a sense of building up your civilization and so forth.  But they aren't really strategic assets unless you are trying to win quickly, or with a minimum of NPCs in your settlement.  That might change with time, but I think that more the focus would be on the world map rather than the settlement buildings to be honest.

That's looking several decisions out, though, and right now that's not really where my head is at for the next few weeks because it's essentially getting into adding a whole new layer.  And what I want to focus on now is just making this layer really polished and focused.  I feel like the citybuilding and the strategic elements of the game are somewhat related but also fairly distinct, though -- that most of the strategic stuff is in how you kit out your character as well as how you colonize the world map (plus what the overlord does with moving things around on the map, and then your efforts to stop his troop movements, longer-term).


Glad it's sounding appealing to folks, anyhow!

[x4000]

UPDATE: 1.020 is now out with a fix to the anachronism missions spawning crazy numbers of enemies in the prior version.  Part of why I did the 1.019 release in the middle of the day was in case there were some severe issues that people found; I didn't want them going overnight if I could help it.

[Nethellus]

That's not a change in this version; it sounds like you bumped the period key.  Or comma, I forget which it is.  Just press it again and you're all set!

Um, yes. Sorry about that. It happened just as I had updated so I thought something had changed.

The shields are meant to be run for a second or two at a time in the first place.  How long are you running them for where this is even an issue?

I'm using them permanently. I have 10 mana upgrades and +92% mana regeneration from enchants. I have enough mana regeneration to take the mana drain from the shields and still regenerate.

[Bluddy]

Hmmm. Chris, you might want to have the shields run for a maximum of about 10 seconds. Actually, maybe you also want to do a dynamic cooldown. Use them for just a second, and you'll get them back pretty fast. Use them for the full 10 seconds, and you'll have to wait 30 seconds to use them again.

[x4000]

That's not a change in this version; it sounds like you bumped the period key.  Or comma, I forget which it is.  Just press it again and you're all set!

Um, yes. Sorry about that. It happened just as I had updated so I thought something had changed.

No worries at all.

The shields are meant to be run for a second or two at a time in the first place.  How long are you running them for where this is even an issue?

I'm using them permanently. I have 10 mana upgrades and +92% mana regeneration from enchants. I have enough mana regeneration to take the mana drain from the shields and still regenerate.

Ahh, now I see how that would work.  Yeah, that's pretty interesting; it's kind of an alternative to health tanking in a lot of ways.  That's an interesting use case, and I appreciate your explaining it to me -- it seems valid, so I'm not inclined to go after you with the nerf bat or anything.  But in terms of the persistence through doors, that's optimizing for the common case where having it persist is pretty much always a bad thing.

I think that the better course of action, regarding what you're trying to accomplish with them, is simply to focus on making a new variant of shield spells that are meant to be continuous-wear instead of something burst-y like the current ones.  Actually I am inclined to hit you with the nerf bat a bit, and make it so that there's a maximum time the current shields can run of something like 2-3 seconds or something; but then pair that with a new shield spell that works the way you want it to.  That way there's not confusion from new folks on the function of the existing shield spells, but the more persistent shield spells are still a viable thing.

Though the way you're using them now really reminds me of Shield in Zelda II.  You had to cast it once per screen, but then it would remain on that whole time.  That's pretty cool... so in that regard it's one of those things where maybe just leaving it the way it is for these ones, and then adding others that are persistent in a somewhat different fashion (reducing mana recharge rate or something else) could be interesting.

Obviously I'm of multiple minds on this one.   I think there is room for more shield variants than what we have now, but I'm not sure I'm keen to majorly change how the current shields work.  I suppose simply fixing the visual on them and making it so that they persist through rooms would be another way to go.

[Nethellus]

I use the shields like this because they are really heal spells. They absorb all damage, therefore they work exactly like health, but health does not regenerate, and mana does.

With a permanent shield you can go through any windstorm area, and as long as you're careful, you can survive just fine with 1 health, since the health that you care about is in the shield, and it takes no damage from windstorms. This makes all windstorm levels the same, and you can farm some serious shards this way.

[Epitaph64]

I love this change to the Tier progression mechanic but sadly I think I'll have to start a new game. I killed all the lieutenants on my continent to get enchants since they didn't progress the CP so now I can only get Tier 5 orbs and still have tier 3 spells... That is unless anyone knows a non achievement breaking way I can give myself a reasonable amount of Tier 4 orbs.

[Moo]

Epitaph64: diluter enchants. Easy.

[Vinraith]

I love this change to the Tier progression mechanic but sadly I think I'll have to start a new game. I killed all the lieutenants on my continent to get enchants since they didn't progress the CP so now I can only get Tier 5 orbs and still have tier 3 spells... That is unless anyone knows a non achievement breaking way I can give myself a reasonable amount of Tier 4 orbs.

You can buy diluter enchants from the opal guardian's store and simply downgrade those tier 5 orbs.