Concentration bar

[Aquohn]

Well, I'm not sure how to put this, but I think there might be something wrong with the way kills are being registered for concentration. I'm not sure what, exactly, but more than a few times I've had to kill more than one monster for the bar just to appear.

Now, I think it'll be much easier to prepare a Mantis report if the concentration bar was there all the time. Someone floated this on Mantis, but Chris said (I think) that it would be intimidating for newbies to have the thing there all the time. So why not make it a toggle-able option, like move confirmation?

[x4000]

The simple answer is this: not all enemies fill your concentration bar at all, so what you are seeing is correct.  The really tiny enemies that spawn in large numbers (or enemies that spawn a lot at all, like leeches) don't help your concentration.  Waaaaay too easy to just spam kill those for maximum concentration.  Off the top of my head, this includes the spawned leeches, spawned tiny fairies, spawned stuff from stationary enemies (bats from sleepy tree, clockwork stuff from the clockwork blockades, etc).

[Aquohn]

Yeah, I wasn't talking about those (it would be pretty dumb to put them in). But I'm talking about killing normal things, like Clockwork Avians and Urban Droids, and not seeing anything change. I have a bit of a theory that, when you get hit, your concentration is actually reduced to zero, even if the level is reduced by 1. Because in my playthrough a few minutes ago, I got hit at max concentration, but I took six kills to get back to that level.

[x4000]

That sounds correct, yes.

When you gain a level or lose a level, it starts your "kill X enemies to advance" counter to 0.  That's always the case, and is by design (it also says that on the interface).  So in other words, getting hit isn't just knocking you down one "enemy killed."  It's knocking you back to the start of the prior level.

[Aquohn]

That sounds correct, yes.

When you gain a level or lose a level, it starts your "kill X enemies to advance" counter to 0.  That's always the case, and is by design (it also says that on the interface).  So in other words, getting hit isn't just knocking you down one "enemy killed."  It's knocking you back to the start of the prior level.

Erm...no, I meant it seems to knock my level counter to zero. Which means, under default difficulty, if I killed six enemies and got my concentration to the max level, if I take a hit the GUI says I'm still at level 2, but it doesn't register any further kills until I kill four enemies.

[x4000]

Hmmm... it sounds like something is off, then.  But it's definitely not knocking your level counter to 0: WYSIWYG there, it's really unlikely that what it's showing would not be what the underlying number is.  But it sounds like one of the other internal stats may be getting off, not sure.  Good one for mantis.

[Aquohn]

OK, I'll try, but Mantis seems pretty dead right now; you guys have to focus on Skyward Collapse. But there original problem still stands. I still think you guys should make the option to display the concentration bar at all times available; there are other benefits from that.

[x4000]

Mantis isn't dead, but we have to prioritize things, yes.  We look at everything that goes into mantis, and if it's not logged there then it definitely gets forgotten.  We catch all major things with all our games that we release regardless of profit we made on the game, but when it comes to doing nice-to-haves we tend not to do that when a game has financially tanked.  We just can't afford to, you know?  I'm still north of $200k in the hole from making Valley 1 and 2.  My gift to the players, eh?

[Aquohn]

Okie, saved a game where the weirdness was happening and uploaded it to Mantis: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11754