AVWW2 - Early impressions/feedback (now with more feedback and less derail!)

[Panopticon]

I don't think you are considering the kind of damage that can occur if Demonaica gets a turn to act unopposed, with no Dispatch missions available to the player. The Dispatch Missions are the single tool at your disposal to keep him off your tail with reverse Traveling Salesman Problems. The arms race isn't the only thing to worry about.

Seems to me it would be pretty easy to create a situation that spirals out of control and that could lead to some really huge long term frustrations for many players.

Now, it's included as an optional difficulty modifier that would be an entirely different ball of wax in my opinion.

[madcow]

I'm rather against turn loss as a penalty for death. Though adding it as a difficulty setting wouldn't be a bad idea. I think the best solution is either morale or mana loss otherwise.

Edit: Just saw the penalty that was gone with, seems like a good way to go. Though I think the (slight) morale loss leading to a surviver downward spiral would be an amusing addition as well.

[MouldyK]

http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Valley_2_-_Beta_Release_Notes#Monster_Aggression_On_Death They are doing this.

[Panopticon]

That looks pretty interesting, can't wait to see how it works in practice.

Mo more suicide pill express now.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Well, you can still suicide pill express, because the game's overall difficulty went down, and the difficulty stays average if you average 3 deaths per level up.

[Panopticon]

Have fun trying to make that work for you.    Sounds good in theory but it's the type of thing in practice that could lead to an early Game Over screen.

Of course it's good that the option is there, for whenever you want it. It's no longer a free ride now though.

And with four-way aiming now in place either I'm readjusting or the game is a lot more difficult now (in the good, compelling kind of way).

[maaltan]

I'm not sure i understand the logic behind the new death penalty.   "You were not good enough to succeed before ..so now i will make it harder"   Without a converse mechanic of some sort to balance it is nothing but a death spiral (no pun intended).  i have some suggestions in a new thread I'm currently composing in another windows (summary:  make a dispatch mission where you can disrupt supply chains/harry demonica,etc.)

I gave .707 a few hours before Christmas and found 2 things i found distasteful:

• turn based difficulty increase
• long long ...long walks back to a very one sided boss fight

I came to terms with the difficulty increase per level once i realised what was going on.  i stretched things out more by doing all the perk spelunking as soon as it was available (and i had a slot open ). 

I ended up getting stuck at a boss fight at a level up windmill where there were about 5-6 waterfall things with 3 horizontal slashy spinny trap things (eye level .. one about 2 character hight up and another at ceiling) and a boss that was spamming infinite calibre spells (they went through waterfalls and all my attacks  including ammo).   on and the ceiling was about 1/2 of my jump high so there was 0 room to maneuver.   also there were spiky plant things for several blocks in front of the door meaning i lost at least 1.5 hearts before i got to where i could start shooting at boss.  if it wasn't for the 10 minute walk back to boss room i probably would have regenerated the level and seen if it was more forgiving.   

Some of these issues have been reduced via the newer updates.  I played a few minutes at the 709 update, but the new death penalty has turned me off as i foresee quickly getting into unwinnable situations.   i will wait a while for the mechanic to evolve some before giving the game another shot.

some more positive comments:

I think i like the 4 way aiming better (but i think the enemies should have the same restriction as someone else already mentioned)

So far i am liking the concept more than avww 1.   AVWW 1 just felt.. grindy...   I played it for about 30hrs according to steam but most of that was trying to unlock various interesting spells (dire butterfly was awesome!  such a conversation starter.i was hoping there was a dire bunny spell also.)

BTW:  The engine (cant remember name atm) that both avww is based around joystick/gamepad support is really really bad.   the deadzone adjustment simply doesn't work (in it's defence most libraries suck at that as well including directx directinput.  MS's Xinput is great  but will lock you to windows more than likely).   I ended up downloading "joy to key" and emulating keyboard input via the gamepad.  the game is 1000% more responsive now.  no missed button presses and deadzone tweaked to about 30% to give me a good feel with the analog stick.  also i can map the POV to up/down/left/right  for use in menus.   i feel gamepad support really needs to be worked on in this game either by licensing another library to handle it or rolling your own.

new years resolution: stop doing multipage posts online ... check .. lasted 5  days on that one

[Panopticon]

Yeah, I'm honestly surprised that my suggestion of losing access to Perks or possibly the mage class you used at the time of character death for one turn was deemed harsher than a permanent difficulty increase in the game.

I just had to start up a new game last night because the organic increase in difficulty due to 4 way aiming combined with spelunking for perk tokens didn't work out too well.

[wyvern83]

I'm not sure i understand the logic behind the new death penalty.   "You were not good enough to succeed before ..so now i will make it harder"   Without a converse mechanic of some sort to balance it is nothing but a death spiral (no pun intended).

I played Valley 2 for the first time yesterday and this was exactly how I felt about the death penalty difficultly increase.

Trying a Skeletal Research Facility was one of the first couple of things I tried in Valley 2 and I was most displeased to find a boss fight waiting for me when I finally made it to the end with low health after dying 5 times already, I died again as you can imagine. I rage deleted the world and started over for what felt like a pointless increase of the difficulty for nothing and put combat to featherweight. (I'm enjoying the game much more as a result.)

Knowing that only 5 Research Facilities are on the entire map helped put it in perspective afterwards but I'm not thrilled with the prospect if I ever play this game on adept combat or higher.