AVWW2 - Beta Feedback by Meh ;)

[eRe4s3r]

So... played a bit.. and I think I will only post this here once ;P I am basically only touching each area.. of course it starts with controls, how could it not.. given that's whats going to be the negative thing anyone will ever bring up about AVWW2 outside of these forums. And yes, these are not going to be suggestions, they are going to be observations and statements based on them. Take them, or throw them in the trash ,p

#The control scheme is..  is gonna go down extremely badly... and I mean it, on a scale.. 1 to 10, where 1 is no impact, and 10 is kinda-end-of-world. This current control scheme implementation for keyboard is Armageddon.. or 11.

I guess I am late to the party with the whole mouse thing. But to me the reason for not putting it in is a mystery. If you can't think of a way to convert 360° circle area around a character into 8 zones on a screen then I can draw you a little picture how to do it. ;P Hint: 360 / 8 is 45 which means a 45° conical aim zone (with softening towards the border in order to accommodate weird aspects) (with a soft linear dead-zone in the center of the character) would allow for mouse aim in 8 directions. This is also how radial menus work.. by the way. So even less reasons why there is no mouse assisted "aim". Obviously, an indicator "which" of the 8 directions we aim at would be kinda required then, Could be a magical beam of light, or simply a faint control indicator line. Without mouse, the game is for me at least control wise a nightmare. It's kinda funny too, in AVWW1 we need to have a good aiming precision because of 360° of aiming freedom. But here where the lack of required accuracy could make for a relaxing mouse aim in just 8 directions you remove it.. I am baffled.

Addendum: And just so it's clear.. if you don't do mouse anyway, putting movement not on WSAD is like one of the seven deadly sins. I had to rebind all keys because I can not move precisely with arrow keys, the problem is, even on WSAD i can't aim diagonally in any way precisely because I can't hit some of the attack keys while holding the diagonal attack modifier (try doing that while evading shots ,p). I can't see how this is going to be any less insane on a gamepad, to be honest.

#Kind of bugs and some confusing stuff
Big Frame drop when countering lots of spells with AOE attack
I jumped accidently into one of these weird slimey balls of hurt.. and instantly died.. ouch ;P Some warning, please? ^^
I am feeling a bit weird shooting light at stones that hurt me when I run against them  What are they even supposed to be?

#Tutorial (minor)
Be less abstruse and much less verbose about what to do. I guess there is also a case here for "less words". The tutorial is very verbose, which drowns out the important parts. Reduce tutorial to proper directional orders. "GO THERE, DO THAT, to achieve PONY" .. basically. Be concise, precise, and demanding. But explain why the heck we are doing something. Like building houses. I have no idea why I would want more resistance fighters for example seeing that I only get 7 actions before what I assume is the end-game, if that's not what happens after the time is over on that castle I am sorry, due to the controls I never got that far. ^^

#Introduction
Yes, the intro is missing for now (beta and all).. but when someone starts a new game, tell them what the goal of the game is ^^

#Motivation
Zeh Item (singular?), they are breaking too fast devaluing the loot, and the life of the character. The impact of losing loot is nay 0 because by the time it may be useful it is already lost anyway. Someone else probably said it already, but suicide runs are the norm in this game. I have no idea what the punishment for death is? But losing item you are losing anyway is not a punishment. So basically, so suicide creep is a rewarding game mechanic. (hey, that's unique, but probably not intended..)

#Art
I like it so far, backgrounds could do with some more details but overall it's a good change. But then again, games were never about graphics... sadly, they are definitely about animations *cough*

#Animations (Mainly a question)
Is that frame rate for player animation sprite gonna stay like this? (I played that Egyptian women character, I hope that's not all the animations are going to be...) I am seeing my character 99.99% of the entire time. This part of the GFX needs to be the most polished, smooth and pretty thing on the screen....  but I have no idea which char is final and which is not... so this can be a moot point.. or not ;p


#Stuff I need to even play the game properly (beyond controls ,p)
You read it here first GAMMA SLIDER Sunlight + this game, does not mix well, not at all. Gamma slider is needed. Especially since the game is kind of.. low contrasty in places ;p

Dat FONT... is in some areas unreadable because of this weird gradient shading going on. Making text shaded is nice idea, sadly, with a black background, and a to-black gradient. I can't read things very well, the intro, and beta"progress" thingy particularly are extremely.. weirdly.. shaded. And blend to the background better than to the foreground (meaning, it is a better background than readable text ,p). It is in some ways linked to the gamma (or brightness) slider missing ;p

Aside that, I have nothing to add or complain. I can tell you though that lack of mouse controls is .. going to hurt this game. Even if there are design reasons for it, pc players reading "no mouse support" will instantly skip your game and worse, talk about it negatively. To them this might easily appear to be a "catering to consoles" action, and this can earn you much heat on the intertubes very quickly. And I see no reason for that.. it seems like a rather silly thing to be hung up over given that 8 directional aim works perfectly reasonable with a mouse too... better than Q and E

rambling mode = OFF
powering down...

[LaughingThesaurus]

Re: Controls
It's something you can adapt to, but probably shouldn't. The thing about it, is if you've played the Ratchet and Clank series, you have a perfect example of what backwards innovation would be. Ratchet and Clank, for instance, added strafing after game 1. If they had then removed it because it trivialized combat, there would have been much more rage than praise. The thing is, the strafing feature allowed more control of your character in logical ways, and allowed the game to have enemies that weren't braindead (They literally just shot at the same position that they first see you for 4 seconds, then scan for you again. The hardest enemies shoot one shot, wait a couple seconds, then retarget to shoot another shot. They also flew, so you had to stop, manually aim, and shoot them). It's not as if I'm saying I hate the 8 direction aiming, or even the emphasis of aiming with strictly a controller. I understand what the idea is, and it's a game that can be played. But, I won't be persuaded that it's a logical decision to be made.
I'm with you here, honestly. I'd rather combat be deepened in other ways, but the way that combat is set up now is at absolute worst, an acceptable way. I tend to enjoy it, it tends to make me think sometimes, and that extra degree of freedom (Where I imagine drones would basically be magic missile from Terraria) would completely break the game as it is set up right now.
...Honestly, what I kind of want to see (in a long term eventually) is maybe less of an expansion of Valley 2, and more of an update to Valley 1, where you CAN play it with the new art and spells, and just in the old gameplay mode of the game being a massive endless explorey grindathon. Maybe even have the same spell interception as in Valley 2. The free aiming would completely break Valley 2, as much as I want it.

Now, aiming in 8 directions with the mouse? I don't see how this would be broken, nobody's really explained it to me. All it really does is remove a brief pause from, say, turning around and shooting while kiting. You can aim diagonally while moving, and all that. Where would this break the game exactly? I guess it would just feel weird.

[zaaq]

Now, aiming in 8 directions with the mouse? I don't see how this would be broken, nobody's really explained it to me.

The feedback in Mantis is "For a myriad of reasons, this isn't something we can really do. Sorry."

I'd venture at least a few relate to the game engine. Valley 1 used the mouse in a traditional "point-and-click" sense, and there are places where this input system is still available in the UI... so implementing an 8-way mouse aiming system isn't feasible while maintaining a solid pace for the remaining gameplay.

[Misery]

I dont understand why everybody focuses on the keybindings specifically.   I know people tend to be lazy by default, but seriously..... it takes all of 3 minutes, if that, to set them however the hell you want.  That's one of the (extremely numerous) reasons why I prefer PC gaming over console gaming.... some console games refuse to allow you to change ANYTHING, ever, period.   Also.... this is a beta, one way or another, and it JUST started.  I would hold off on keybind-complaints until later.  I'm guessing that the current defaults are more of a placeholder than anything, as the game gets more and more worked on.  Setting them to something else might also just be something the devs simply havent gotten around to yet, as likely there are other priorities that come first.


Now, as for the mouse....  I do agree that yes, mouse could be used WITH 8-way firing.   Frankly, as long as the 8-way is NOT replaced with 360-aim like in the first game, I cant say I care much about it.   But I dont know that it'd work out as well as people seem to think.  I can remember a few games that I've played that has this control style as an option, the mouse + 8-way.   I can remember that it was a disaster that I put up with for all of 5 swearword-filled minutes before turning it off for good.   But, that's just me.   Having the option to use it in the game is likely a good idea.  I have a hard time believing that the good developers we have here would be unable to manage this.   At the same time though, I'm curious about what their response to it might be.


Overall, this is a very well thought out feedback post.  As the art goes, I'm not sure that all of the art aspects are completely finished?  That's what I remember hearing anyway.  I really love the artstyle and everything with this game so far, but some pieces of art do look pretty "rough", while others are detailed and very nice indeed.   I imagine this will improve over time. 


One quick quote:

#Motivation
Zeh Item (singular?), they are breaking too fast devaluing the loot, and the life of the character. The impact of losing loot is nay 0 because by the time it may be useful it is already lost anyway. Someone else probably said it already, but suicide runs are the norm in this game. I have no idea what the punishment for death is? But losing item you are losing anyway is not a punishment. So basically, so suicide creep is a rewarding game mechanic. (hey, that's unique, but probably not intended..)

Absolutely agree with this.   Now, I know that the death penalty supposedly gets pretty darn nasty in the later part of the game, but.... having ZERO penalty for the first half just doesnt seem to work very well to me.  It's like, ok, give me good REASON to actually make my way back out of the cave after grabbing the perk thing, as opposed to grabbing the thing and then immediately using the suicide pill.   This is not supposed to be a super-easy game by default.  Heck, unlike the first game, this is one where you can LOSE ENTIRELY, as in, complete un-fixable game over sort of deal (when all survivors are lost), and I think that's a very good thing.... so having this part of the game that has no penalty for anything done in the sidescroller areas is kinda strange.


Also, agreed on the equipment.   I really do like the idea of having equipment that breaks as you get hit.   Something that's USEFUL, but that WILL shatter after a time.   But right now, they vanish SO stupidly fast, and are so darn rare, that they're kinda pointless.   If I had a say in this, I'd do it like so:  You can only equip one thing at a time, but can hold up to three pieces in "reserve", which you could access on the strategic map, just like how you change anything else for your character.   The number of hits that items take to completely shatter would be increased quite a bit.   It's a tough game, so even 20 hits is not THAT much.  There would be absolutely zero way to repair equipment, unless maybe there's some sort of very rare special thing that could do it that only appears in very specific tile types (and then only works exactly once).   Currently equipped stuff, or stuff that you havent gotten all the way out and back to the strategic map with, would be lost upon death.  Also, items would be quite a bit more common.  Certain tile types would have a higher chance than others of containing some.

So yeah, that's how I'd do it.  I'd love to see the equipment system expanded upon and balanced out a bit better.

[LaughingThesaurus]

The way I look at it, the no death penalty game is practice for when you actually suffer serious consequences for death later on. If you just suicide pill out beyond that part, you'll have no practice in dealing with the stuff on the way out... but then there's also the fact that I haven't heard the idea of a good death penalty. People mention locking you out of mage classes or perks temporarily, or all around making you weaker, but all that's going to do is make the game even harder, and potentially give you unwinnable situations. If you want to lose the game on death, you just make that upfront, instead of taking away your progression and making the game impossible to win at anymore. Be upfront about that kind of thing. There should be some little resource cost, maybe morale or mana, but nothing else.
Otherwise, I'm imagining my frequent deaths to bosses in my first playthrough. I would literally have lost the game at the first lieutenant like 5 turns in, quit the game forever, and declared it broken if I were forced to suffer serious death penalties for how ridiculously hard the game was. I have maybe slightly above average skill at games. I can beat things that require more patience, like say Super Meat Boy. You die, you just replay the level to where you died... but the game's ridiculously hard. Hate to say it, but giving this game (which is on a similar level of 'hard' in some cases) that kind of punishment (perks or classes) would make it potentially unplayable.

[zespri]

Addendum: And just so it's clear.. if you don't do mouse anyway, putting movement not on WSAD is like one of the seven deadly sins. I had to rebind all keys because I can not move precisely with arrow keys, the problem is, even on WSAD i can't aim diagonally in any way precisely because I can't hit some of the attack keys while holding the diagonal attack modifier (try doing that while evading shots ,p).

Erm... did you try to re-bind?

I'm not getting what is this big deal about the controls really. Yes, absence of mouse and obscure reasons why it can't be supported in 2012 is weird, I agree. But the games seems perfectly playable and enjoyable to me so far. I'm not a platformer fan, mind you and I probably won't survive on higher difficulties at all, so that might explain why I'm not seeing the problem.

I jumped accidently into one of these weird slimey balls of hurt.. and instantly died.. ouch ;P Some warning, please? ^^

Not quite sure what you are after. You jumped there once, now you know not to jump there again. This is the way how it works in most computer games. Limbo specifically comes to mind.

I am feeling a bit weird shooting light at stones that hurt me when I run against them  What are they even supposed to be?

Yeah. I get this feeling too. I'm supposing there is some lore information somewhere on avww1 wiki that we did not care to read carefully.

Be less abstruse and much less verbose about what to do. I guess there is also a case here for "less words". The tutorial is very verbose, which drowns out the important parts. Reduce tutorial to proper directional orders. "GO THERE, DO THAT, to achieve PONY" .. basically. Be concise, precise, and demanding. But explain why the heck we are doing something. Like building houses. I have no idea why I would want more resistance fighters for example seeing that I only get 7 actions before what I assume is the end-game, if that's not what happens after the time is over on that castle I am sorry, due to the controls I never got that far. ^^

I don't agree here. The only complaint about tutorial that I have is that I spent several minutes finding the "S" button that moves things forward. The game goal is contained in the Help menu, which is to my taste well written. If you care to go there and read all the info provided that will be time well spent. Your particular question about the number of fighters is also answered there: there reason is twofold: a) when all of them are killed you lose, so you better off having more than less. b) since the area they cover is big in the end game, and the number of tiles a fighter can go in one turn is limited, you want more of them so you are more flexible reaching any points on you borders you might want to get to,

Zeh Item (singular?), they are breaking too fast devaluing the loot, and the life of the character. The impact of losing loot is nay 0 because by the time it may be useful it is already lost anyway.

I started getting this feeling too, but I only had a single item yet, so was not sure if short life time expectancy is norm.

Someone else probably said it already, but suicide runs are the norm in this game. I have no idea what the punishment for death is? But losing item you are losing anyway is not a punishment. So basically, so suicide creep is a rewarding game mechanic. (hey, that's unique, but probably not intended..)

Can you explain what you mean here? When you suicide, everyone (may be except bosses/mini-bosses) respawn. How can you suicide run???

Dat FONT... is in some areas unreadable because of this weird gradient shading going on. Making text shaded is nice idea, sadly, with a black background, and a to-black gradient. I can't read things very well, the intro, and beta"progress" thingy particularly are extremely.. weirdly.. shaded. And blend to the background better than to the foreground (meaning, it is a better background than readable text ,p). It is in some ways linked to the gamma (or brightness) slider missing ;p

Oh yeah. I have all the same problems. The text is quite hard to read in places.

[eRe4s3r]

Well what does it matter when things respawn? You are only going there once, but you retain the perk you (probably) found. There is no motivation to go the entire way back (which for some maps, can be quite a long way...). I guess it is just more a feeling off "Life ain't worth a thing" in the game but maybe worse is that for example, after finding loot, the maps should somewhat change. Like.. in Prince of Persia remake, you go somewhere, fight the boss, land gets converted to pretty.. and you can find stuff there now that wasn't there before. 

Alternatively, give us a town portal with a cool-down

I guess what I am saying is more loot, more diversity and more to discover ;p

Also.. more LOOT

Erm... did you try to re-bind?

I'm not getting what is this big deal about the controls really. Yes, absence of mouse and obscure reasons why it can't be supported in 2012 is weird, I agree. But the games seems perfectly playable and enjoyable to me so far. I'm not a platformer fan, mind you and I probably won't survive on higher difficulties at all, so that might explain why I'm not seeing the problem.

Yeah I did ;p, but as a hardcore FPS gamer I have an imprinted control system and it's nay impossible to get out of it. To me, char movement is linked to left hand. This means moving the entire attack and diagonal aim stuff to the numpad.. and there problems continue, I can't press the diagonal modifiers and attack in a hurry. I have to constantly look where I am on the numpad because it's such an weird thing to press a button for.

I even have a better idea for it, make shift a "stand still modifier" so that we can hold shift and press a direction + attack button. Because then I could bind all the attack keys on my mouse. Which has more better positioned buttons than the right hand side keyboard.

I am simply not able to aim accurate when I have to press 2 buttons for diagonal aiming ^^

[zaaq]

I dont understand why everybody focuses on the keybindings specifically.   I know people tend to be lazy by default, but seriously..... it takes all of 3 minutes, if that, to set them however the hell you want.

I'd venture that there are a few contributing causes to people's frustrations:

• Many players play games to gain a sense of accomplishment. When their first experience is struggling to interact with it--something fairly trivial in most games--It's jarring and off-putting.
• The fact that it's so easy to change the controls is likely a contributing factor... The thought goes something like "My grandmother could tell these controls are terrible. If it's so easy to change, why haven't they fixed it?"

No mouse controls fits in with the above, with additional frustruation caused by feeling entitled to the controls in Valley 1. People dislike losing things, and often do extreme things trying to prevent loss.

I guess it is just more a feeling off "Life ain't worth a thing" in the game but maybe worse is that for example, after finding loot, the maps should somewhat change. Like.. in Prince of Persia remake, you go somewhere, fight the boss, land gets converted to pretty.. and you can find stuff there now that wasn't there before. 

That sounds awesome. How would that work w/ loots? Maybe if there was a way to select new perks, so venturing out of the map provides a way to "try it out"? Or if picking up a perk had a random chance of changing time/weather/etc?

[eRe4s3r]

Well obviously there needs to be more loot... I am kinda sad we have absolutely no proper loot "eating" system. I think people are under wrong conceptions anyway when they think of loot. The thing with enemies dropping loot is a prime example, enemies need to drop (some) loot even if it's just money*, not because you should grind them but because fighting them offers no rewards. Humans are reward animals. We want rewards, always, we also want the chance for an extremely cool reward (hence random weighted loot). Fighting an enemy just to gain back health is not a reward (it's a punishment loop). This is why so many people find the game extremely unmotivating to play. There is literally no reward for doing certain things. Clearing dungeons is one of these things.

And loot doesn't have to be armor. There are many things this game could do to "eat" loot. Like giving us a drone or wisp of some kind that we can "feed" with certain types of loot and that changes it's attack or defense abilities, helping us in return. That way fighting enemies could give us an indirect reward. And secondly, make the game less lonely. (Kudos for the lines the chars say when entering new regions, that's neat.. it needs to be expanded.. with a companion "thing" that acts as loot eater and item storage.

But also that the world has so little feedback. When I cleanse this area I want it to see sprouting flowers, I want to see I did something that affected the world area. Currently the system in place is the absolutely worst, you go there, shoot the "thing" and .. everything respawns.. wut? What if I wanted to go back to look at that 1 cave or explore? Suddenly you punished me for clearing a level. Essentially, another punishment loop, instead of reward loop. Also.... it's kinda hilarious to "cleanse" an area just to be killed by the suddenly re-spawned enemy group that I just killed to be able to cleanse the world.

Maybe I am going of a tangent here where I just don't agree with the gameplay. To me, going somewhere to advance the end-of-world counter is counter to fun. In AI War, I do things to advance to victory but in AVWW2 I never really feel like I have a directed chance to advance towards victory (if anything, clearing areas seems to be advancing me towards the end-of-the-world ,p). It's not really a specific gameplay thing, rather it's the feeling. I don't feel like I am getting anywhere with what I am doing in the game.

I think the game also needs some more interaction things. I mean real interactions. Press E to use kind of interactions. This could be easter eggs, pointless stuff that just produces some text or rewarding stuff that gives you an reward for going somewhere after you cleansed a world.

[Nanashi]

I really hate repeating myself, but since you probably don't read other threads before posting (Otherwise you'd keep feedback threads consolidated.):

There's nothing wrong with putting movement on the right hand arrow keys and actions on the left hand. That's the default binding scheme for Falcom games, emulators, many flash games,almost any doujin games from Japan , VVVVVV, very many indie games (like Costume Quest) any keyboard-based game on the Amiga, or most other games where mouse use is not important. Left-handed people play games just fine on controllers, you can adapt to using the right hand for movement.

The main reason WASD was introduced was because most people are right handed and some games (first person shooters mostly) require one hand on the mouse at all times. Valley 2 is not one of those games. (It wasn't even popular until Quake came around.) When a game is entirely keyboard-based, there is absolutely nothing wrong with arrow-key based movement.

Also, as a personal opinion to counter the current sentiment democratically:
I have absolutely no desire to see mouse aiming back in Valley 2. I'm glad it's dead. Glad glad glad. I don't need mouse controls in Valley 2 either, I think there are far more important issues to address than putting mouse control in Valley 2 (Putting it in for menus or the strategic overview would be nice, but not necessary).

[Mánagarmr]

Something that needs to be said though is that a platformer more or less lives on its controls. If the controls are sluggish or unintuitive, the game will fail, regardless of the rest of the gameplay. Imagine Super Meat Boy, VVVVVV or Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams without the snappy, direct and easy controls. Not so successful then.

Now, granted, those are hardcore platformers, but it's still quite important to have a solid, easy to understand and reliable control scheme in your game, or it simply is to much of a bother to play.

[Nanashi]

Something that needs to be said though is that a platformer more or less lives on its controls. If the controls are sluggish or unintuitive, the game will fail, regardless of the rest of the gameplay. Imagine Super Meat Boy, VVVVVV or Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams without the snappy, direct and easy controls. Not so successful then.

Now, granted, those are hardcore platformers, but it's still quite important to have a solid, easy to understand and reliable control scheme in your game, or it simply is to much of a bother to play.

Granted, but that has nothing to do with using arrow keys for movement and more to do with unresponsive controls or awkwardness in design. Games are designed around specific control inputs very often - I've heard that Twisted Dreams was designed around the 360 controller in mind, and Alice: Madness Returns controls terribly using the keyboard+mouse but perfectly with a controller. On the other hand, playing Starcraft or Diablo with a controller would suck. As far as Valley 2 goes for a keyboard-based game, it's ok in control scheme except for awkward diagonal aiming issues which are designed into the game itself. IWBTG is probably one of the most difficult precision platformers out there and guess what - it uses arrow keys for movement!

[eRe4s3r]

There's nothing wrong with putting movement on the right hand arrow keys and actions on the left hand. That's the default binding scheme for Falcom games, emulators, many flash games,almost any doujin games from Japan , VVVVVV, very many indie games (like Costume Quest) any keyboard-based game on the Amiga, or most other games where mouse use is not important. Left-handed people play games just fine on controllers, you can adapt to using the right hand for movement.

I expect controls adapting to me

And while it's nice you can handle these controls on keyboard. I can't. Like I literally can not play this game accurately on the level the boss fights require no matter how I bind controls. If you think I suck at controlling games, we can always play a round of BF3.. ;P

And yeah, it's because of the diagonal attack keys. ^^

[zaaq]

But also that the world has so little feedback. When I cleanse this area I want it to see sprouting flowers, I want to see I did something that affected the world area. Currently the system in place is the absolutely worst, you go there, shoot the "thing" and .. everything respawns.. wut? What if I wanted to go back to look at that 1 cave or explore? Suddenly you punished me for clearing a level. Essentially, another punishment loop, instead of reward loop. Also.... it's kinda hilarious to "cleanse" an area just to be killed by the suddenly re-spawned enemy group that I just killed to be able to cleanse the world.

To be fair, you do get more area revealed on the map

I'm not sure that modifying the platforming areas would be all that interesting. In the current implementation, they're a means to an end--a minigame, of sorts. There's some exploring wrt caves, but I get the feeling that we're not expected to spend much time in them.

As to why... there's not really that much to do on the platforming maps. You jump around, kill stuff, and pick up the occasional merc coin. Other than that, it's just rushing to the next perk/generator/level up statue/etc.

Thus, my goal is usually "clear the area as fast as possible", so that I get another turn on the strategic map.

[zespri]

I'm not sure that modifying the platforming areas would be all that interesting. In the current implementation, they're a means to an end--a minigame, of sorts. There's some exploring wrt caves, but I get the feeling that we're not expected to spend much time in them.
As to why... there's not really that much to do on the platforming maps. You jump around, kill stuff, and pick up the occasional merc coin. Other than that, it's just rushing to the next perk/generator/level up statue/etc.

I can bet that it's not intended as a mini-game this is THE game. There is not much to do on strategic map, you can do two things only 1) Dispatch 2) Embark into "mini-game". This is about sums up all your options. Granted there is quite a bit of thinking goes on the strategic map, which sinks some time, but bulk of the gaming time you are spending in the platformer mode.