AVWW Post-Release 1.108 "Construction Sometimes Starts With Demolition" Released

[Penumbra]

The spell was capable of lasting, what, FIFTY seconds before, if you had it at tier 5?   Nobody ever complained about it during earlier versions.

To be honest, I've complained about it when it first was introduced, and wrote the Mantis issue sometime in April. I never brought it up in the forums until this recent change to increase the default duration. So, yes, 50 seconds is worthy of all caps and sounding ridiculous and whatnot. 

  And really, the complaints don't make sense to me.   

My complaints are about the whole darkness system. Darkness is an obstacle, like water, or terrain, or monsters.

Acid water requires sacrifice to deal with. You need to use an enchant or pick a Skelebot to avoid it. Both of these come with giving up some maneuverability and even defensive capabilities. A spell that just let your breath water for 30 seconds would trivialize it.

Terrain requires jumping and placing platforms. There is "transmogrify into bat" as a limited use scroll, but it hurts your damage output and increases your incoming damage. If this was replaced by a 30 second duration fly spell that only cost mana, it would trivialize terrain.

Monsters require fighting and dodging. (This example is rather extreme, but I hope you see my point. ) A spell that just froze every monster in a chunk for 30 seconds, that just cost mana and had no cooldown, would just remove the obstacle entirely.



This brings be to darkness.First, what is darkness trying to accomplish as an obstacle?

I believe it serves many purposes. It gives caves a different feel from the outdoors or even inside buildings. It hides monsters from the player. It makes platform jumping more difficult. These are all bad things that the player wants to avoid. There is no give and take with darkness, no benefit for leaving it.

Next, what are the players options for dealing with darkness?

As you mentioned, it can be completely ignored for picking a Drakonite. They are very slow and require a different enchant load-out make up for their deficiencies.  There are various strength emit light enchants that can fit on at least two different slots, which can mitigate some darkness at the expense of other bonuses.

A whole host of spells can be used to provide light in various different ways. Permanent stationary, long range temporary, dropping lamps, crawling snakes. These all have pros and cons and come with varying  resource and opportunity costs.



All these different methods for dealing with the affects of darkness are what the obstacle is balanced around. Flash of Light is the "gimme" option. It is not a meaningful game play choice. Casting it is busy work. No thought, just remembering to cast it every 20 seconds so it doesn't run out. Personally, I find that more annoying than compelling. 

I would suggest a difficulty toggle of "no darkness" instead. For people who can't be bothered with the other options, or are so annoyed by darkness it has a great negative impact on their enjoyment, just get rid of it.

[Bluddy]

My opinion is that darkness adds a lot to the game in terms of atmosphere. Basically what Penumbra said. However, I don't feel like darkness is tackled in the game in a meaningful way. It seems like there are too many ways to tackle darkness, to the point that they completely rob the system of any intent.

I'll give an example I'm familiar with. In Din's Curse, you delve into dungeons. The natural approach would have been to give the player torches, but that would have encumbered the player with too much micromanagement. Instead, the player is given a light radius. There are torches in the dungeons that can be turned on, but they have a limited light radius. If the player really wants to see better, he can get a +light radius modifier on some of his equipment, which comes at the cost of other modifiers (similar to the enchant system in AVWW). But if he doesn't use a light modifier, he has to rely on the torches in the dungeon. Additionally, some dungeons have extra darkness modifiers, making not using a light modifier even riskier.

In AVWW, I can't really say what the gameplay model for lighting is. You have light enchants, but you also have light snake, flash of light, ball of light, and more. It's just too dispersed. Taking out a lamp in a building has almost no consequence because you have so many replacements. Additionally, ball of light makes getting through dark areas a matter of tedium. It's cool to have your visibility limited. It's cool to have that visibility be a trade-off based on your enchants. But when it's just a matter of not spamming enough balls of light, it becomes annoying.

What I'd like to see is streamlining of the lighting mechanic to the point that tedium is reduced and the balance is made clear. Having background torches spawn randomly in caves would be a better way to do the ball of light mechanic. You'd light these with fire spells and have them blown out with water/air spells. Additionally, light spells (ie spells of the light element) could keep the area lit for a little while, much like 'flash of light' does now. Knocking out a lamp in a building would have real consequences -- it wouldn't be so easy to replace the light generated by a lamp. And when you go to deep, dark areas, a light enchant would be a really good idea. Deeper areas could be progressively darker to incentivize this more.

[Misery]

The spell was capable of lasting, what, FIFTY seconds before, if you had it at tier 5?   Nobody ever complained about it during earlier versions.

To be honest, I've complained about it when it first was introduced, and wrote the Mantis issue sometime in April. I never brought it up in the forums until this recent change to increase the default duration. So, yes, 50 seconds is worthy of all caps and sounding ridiculous and whatnot. 

  And really, the complaints don't make sense to me.   

My complaints are about the whole darkness system. Darkness is an obstacle, like water, or terrain, or monsters.

Acid water requires sacrifice to deal with. You need to use an enchant or pick a Skelebot to avoid it. Both of these come with giving up some maneuverability and even defensive capabilities. A spell that just let your breath water for 30 seconds would trivialize it.

Terrain requires jumping and placing platforms. There is "transmogrify into bat" as a limited use scroll, but it hurts your damage output and increases your incoming damage. If this was replaced by a 30 second duration fly spell that only cost mana, it would trivialize terrain.

Monsters require fighting and dodging. (This example is rather extreme, but I hope you see my point. ) A spell that just froze every monster in a chunk for 30 seconds, that just cost mana and had no cooldown, would just remove the obstacle entirely.



This brings be to darkness.First, what is darkness trying to accomplish as an obstacle?

I believe it serves many purposes. It gives caves a different feel from the outdoors or even inside buildings. It hides monsters from the player. It makes platform jumping more difficult. These are all bad things that the player wants to avoid. There is no give and take with darkness, no benefit for leaving it.

Next, what are the players options for dealing with darkness?

As you mentioned, it can be completely ignored for picking a Drakonite. They are very slow and require a different enchant load-out make up for their deficiencies.  There are various strength emit light enchants that can fit on at least two different slots, which can mitigate some darkness at the expense of other bonuses.

A whole host of spells can be used to provide light in various different ways. Permanent stationary, long range temporary, dropping lamps, crawling snakes. These all have pros and cons and come with varying  resource and opportunity costs.

Ehhh, I can understand that, except for one thing:  The other things, like the platforms and area layout, the monsters and their varying patterns..... all that stuff actually ups the difficulty of the game.

The light/dark system....  I've never seen it do this (and this is with me having the combat & platforming difficulty maxed).    I've yet to have a nasty situation occur, or get a character killed (or even really take extra damage) because of darkness in any area.  That's part of why I dont like it.... it really feels like it's adding absolutely nothing at all to the game, aside from managing to take up a slot on the hotbar with some light spell that I prefer to not have to use.   That's why I'd used inventory management as an example;  that's something that a player has to DEAL with..... but it's not actually challenging, interesting, or deep.   It's just..... sorta there, and usually pretty obnoxious. 

All these different methods for dealing with the affects of darkness are what the obstacle is balanced around. Flash of Light is the "gimme" option. It is not a meaningful game play choice. Casting it is busy work. No thought, just remembering to cast it every 20 seconds so it doesn't run out. Personally, I find that more annoying than compelling. 

That.   That's what I get out of the OTHER spells/methods.  Light ball, moon lamps, whatever, they dont require any actual thought or planning or whatever.   On the rare occaision (usually at the very, very start of a new world) that I actually have to use the horrible light ball spell, for instance, I just stick it on one of the triggers (PS3 controller) and keep randomly mashing it as I move around.   That's it.   That's as complicated as the lighting ever gets in the entire game.     It adds nothing to the combat or to the platforming, it just makes me more irritable than I already am.

I would suggest a difficulty toggle of "no darkness" instead. For people who can't be bothered with the other options, or are so annoyed by darkness it has a great negative impact on their enjoyment, just get rid of it.

I'd go for that, so long as it's not tied to any of the other difficulty settings in any way.

What I'd like to see is streamlining of the lighting mechanic to the point that tedium is reduced and the balance is made clear. Having background torches spawn randomly in caves would be a better way to do the ball of light mechanic. You'd light these with fire spells and have them blown out with water/air spells. Additionally, light spells (ie spells of the light element) could keep the area lit for a little while, much like 'flash of light' does now. Knocking out a lamp in a building would have real consequences -- it wouldn't be so easy to replace the light generated by a lamp. And when you go to deep, dark areas, a light enchant would be a really good idea. Deeper areas could be progressively darker to incentivize this more.

It's not a BAD idea, but...... ehhhhh.   In all honesty, I'd probably just move on to other games if a heavy mechanic like that were in place, and I doubt I'm the only one.     One thing I like about this game:   It's one of the very, very, VERY few games that does not test my (non-existent) patience.   I dont wait for stuff very well.  Cutscenes, talky bits?  Hate 'em.  Cant stand story in games PERIOD, as I find it only gets in the way (and there are no exceptions).  Or stuff like the dull-as-all-heck Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time;   I always loathed having to pass through here, because it took forever and was really boring, as nothing was happening, the field is open and blank, there's no monsters, nothing's exploding or anything.  Even stuff like "push switch and watch door slowly open" is annoying.   AVWW has been amazingly good about NOT doing this stuff.   I enter a room, I immediately find some monsters.   I can immediately begin fighting the monsters, and immediately begin exploring the room.  When I'm ready to further explore the area, I can find doors or whatever, and step throiugh them, no waiting on those either.   The game keeps up a pace that is entirely determined by MY actions.    The only time I ever really find an exception to this is if I get an area that's literally covered in Stinging Nettles, as I kinda have to keep clearing the bloody things away so I have places to stand that dont do damage..... naturally, I tend to just avoid chunks/areas that have too many of these.    Other than that though..... the game has always been very good about keeping the pacing tied to the player's actions/movements/decisions.   .......except in caves, when Flash is not available.  THEN, it honestly gets tedious and annoying.   My only thought during this is usually "Bah, I just want to see where I'm going so I can freaking go already".      Fortunately, I've not run into this situation all that often.    But yeah, having the light/dark mechanic INCREASED and having to do things like specifically NOT destroy background objects because that'll make it darker, or having to run around and find unlit torches..... ugh.   That'd get on my nerves really fast.

I've completely forgotten what else I was gonna say or where else I was going with this.

[x4000]

New version!  http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11037.0.html