Constructive Criticism

[Bluddy]

I've been following the development of AVWW for a while. Like many people, I was disappointed when Arcen made the switch to a side-scroller -- a decision based almost entirely on art assets. Nevertheless, I trusted Arcen's instincts and had high hopes. I've since played the demo many times, trying my best to get into it, and I have a lot of feedback. I've waited a long time before writing this post to make sure I wasn't the only one with this opinion -- it's easy to become overly subjective when you hold a strong opinion.

First, there are a few things I want to warn Arcen about. I think you have a great forum here, but I think it's not giving you enough constructive criticism. This is a really big problem. Everyone here is gushing about how great the game is, but not enough people are saying what they don't like about the game. Or maybe they're expressing their opinion on Mantis -- I'm not sure, but I am sure that this forum isn't the kind of forum I'm used to in a beta.

I also think there's another problem, and that has to do with the way Arcen is partly gauging the popularity of AVWW -- via sales. I think there are quite a few people who bought AVWW because they like AI War and they sporadically followed AVWW's development, but after buying the game became quite disappointed with it and don't necessarily plan to keep playing it. I can't tell how big this group is, but I suspect it's not insubstantial.

Now to the problems with the game itself. I understand that it's beta and everything, but I think the core mechanics have serious flaws that need to be addressed. Adding more monsters is not going to solve the problems. The way the game plays right now is just too boring -- really really boring. I've tried to analyze why that is, and I've come up with a few points as well as a few possible solutions.

1. The areas are too large. Arcen is approaching the size of this game as if it's AI War. In AI War (from what I understand) there was good reason to make a huge galaxy: you were hunting for the location of the AIs. Also, space games by their nature lend themselves to being overly huge. In an exploration game, though, if exploration is tedious, then something is very wrong. And exploration in this game is very tedious. Here's my reaction to finding a house in one of the first areas for the first time: "Wow -- a house! And I can enter it! Sweet! And there are rooms! My there are lots of rooms... lots and lots of rooms... and they're all fairly similar... OK I gotta get out of here; this is too much. But it was cool that there was a house there I could enter. I'll remember this as 'The Region With An Awesome House'. Wait, there's another house... and another one... and... 12 more houses! In this one little area alone!" You basically take the natural curiosity/sense of exploration of gamers and trample it to death with the amount of areas and rooms in this game. And let's not even mention the caves -- they go on forever and ever.

I understand you've tried to cover up for the size of areas with warp potions, colored maps and such. But I think this is just avoiding the main problem. I shouldn't need a colored map to tell me there's a huge stash of stuff in the room 2 doors down if I head in this or that direction. It should be the palpable feeling of seeing that stuff that surprises me.

2. Monster nests. They're really not a good idea as they are. Why? Aside from the fact that 3 skulls spawning all sorts of mobs is ridiculous -- that's obviously just a cosmetic issue -- the problem is you're teasing players into smashing every one of them. Time is not a resource in this game. So if you give the option of destroying monster nests, players get a feeling like they should destroy them -- they have no reason not to except that it's tedious. And tedium should not be a limit on doing things. If you give players tedious ways to do things that have no other disadvantage, they'll carry those things out and just get bored. You could try telling them not to do those things, but they'll get a funny feeling in their stomach that they should do them anyway. Indestructible nests, which is what you had initially, is not a good solution, as could be seen by the objections that came up.

3. Allowing the player to go everywhere. You guys keep mentioning Metroid, but one of the coolest things in Metroid was seeing some tantalizing powerup, not being able to get to it, and then finally getting the movement powerup needed to get that other powerup. You used this gameplay element in the tutorial, but for the rest of the game we have at least ride the lightning and storm dash, which albeit cool, allow us to go anywhere we want. The best side-scrollers limit where the player can go so that later on the player can finally get there, and you're just not making use of that at all.

4. Rinse, wash, repeat. Every game has a repetitive core, but the best games hide it. By separating out the caves as the place to get weapons, and the above-ground areas as the place where you fight the main bad guys using said weapons, you've created a very obvious cycle and essentially separated the game out into 2 mini-games (aside from the strategic and action part) that have to be iterated over constantly, whether the player wants to or not. I may be enjoying myself on the overworld area, but here I go again heading into the caves to improve my weapons. It's not even a matter of how often I need to update my weapons. Just the fact that weapons can only be improved in the caverns means there's a strong incentive constantly pushing me to go there to see if I can improve them. Contrast this to the way standard ARPGs do things: you find loot wherever you are. Some could be worse, some could be better. If you want to make sure you get better weapons, all you have to do is visit the shop. It's trivial, and the way you find enough money to buy better weapons is simply by killing mobs ie doing the main activity. So the game rewards you for a)planning ahead and b)just playing it. Imagine if every time I went to the shop I had to solve 10 puzzles to be able to find a better weapon, and imagine that was the only way to get better weapons. I'd hate going to the shop, but I'd be forced to do it repeatedly. It would become a chore.

5. This one isn't a criticism: I just want to say I love the art. I think it's what draws me back. I see that random opening shot every time you start up the game and I just want to be in that world again.

OK now for some possible solutions:

1. Area sizes should be reduced dramatically. The way areas are now, they're way past what can fit in players' memories. Right now players can really only remember the boss rooms because those are relatively few. I should be able to recall: this is the area that has this building with cool stuff. This is the area that has that really deep cave. That's how dynamic stories are woven in the player's mind. But it's all just a blur because there's too much stuff. With the decreased sizes, tedium will be reduced and areas will be more fun to explore. I suggest you try to initialize a world with much fewer and smaller areas/houses/caves/rooms etc and see if it helps the experience.

2. Turns should advance every X minutes. There could be a countdown on the screen to remind you. X could vary by difficulty level. With time turned into a precious resource, suddenly it makes sense that I can't destroy every monster nest -- it's a waste of precious time. The goal of the game now shifts to finding the best stuff I can to equip my settlement/increase my strength before the inevitable invasion of the overlords and their minions. With time as a resource, a large world suddenly makes a lot more sense -- I need to sift through it to find the best stuff I can -- though I still suggest reducing the size. Building wind shelters would also be a real strategic choice: should I waste time trying to build this thing, or should I instead head straight for the resources and take my chances? I think this change alone would make the game far more interesting.

3. Since the game is infinite, movement powerups such as ride the lightning have to be severely limited. This allows you to construct areas where things are out of reach unless you use a movement powerup. I recommend turning all movement stuff into time-limited potions. There could also be a very rare permanent version of one of these movement methods, but it should have serious negative consequences attached as well, so that activating it has a very real cost. Another possibility is to only allow one movement powerup at a time, but that would still allow reaching virtually every place.

4. You have permadeath on your side in a very cool and fairly original way. Don't neglect to use it! Caves should be hazardous, and difficult to go down, with appropriate rewards. Perhaps you could make it such that if you die, you lose only the (town) supplies you gained since the last time you visited a town, unless you spelunk back to go back to retrieve your latest possessions. Wooden bridges should be rare. I also recommend adding in a suicide button in case the player gets stuck with no way out.

5. Get rid of the lather/rinse/repeat cycle. Weapons (crystals) should be available everywhere. Perhaps in the caves you can get bigger amounts since they're the source, but surely other people stashed rocks away as well if they're so precious. You then get to explore what you want to explore rather than being told by the game that it's now time to head to the caves because you need new weapons.

I don't expect people -- especially people on this board, who are enamored with the game as it is -- to agree with my criticisms. I do think, however, that they're shared by a not insignificant number of people who used to be very excited about this game. Hopefully at the very least my comments will allow the devs to take a step back and re-evaluate some of these points.

[TNSe]

1. Area sizes should be reduced dramatically. The way areas are now, they're way past what can fit in players' memories. Right now players can really only remember the boss rooms because those are relatively few. I should be able to recall: this is the area that has this building with cool stuff. This is the area that has that really deep cave. That's how dynamic stories are woven in the player's mind. But it's all just a blur because there's too much stuff. With the decreased sizes, tedium will be reduced and areas will be more fun to explore. I suggest you try to initialize a world with much fewer and smaller areas/houses/caves/rooms etc and see if it helps the experience.

I think this can be fixed by putting NO useful things inside of "normal" rooms. That way players learn to only search for those "special" rooms. Size is not a matter once you learn to read the maps (in my opinion). It is slightly like the Metroid rooms with a square in them. Those were the interesting rooms, rest were transport rooms.

2. Turns should advance every X minutes. There could be a countdown on the screen to remind you. X could vary by difficulty level. With time turned into a precious resource, suddenly it makes sense that I can't destroy every monster nest -- it's a waste of precious time. The goal of the game now shifts to finding the best stuff I can to equip my settlement/increase my strength before the inevitable invasion of the overlords and their minions. With time as a resource, a large world suddenly makes a lot more sense -- I need to sift through it to find the best stuff I can -- though I still suggest reducing the size. Building wind shelters would also be a real strategic choice: should I waste time trying to build this thing, or should I instead head straight for the resources and take my chances? I think this change alone would make the game far more interesting.

If killing monster nests did not give any reward (like they can now) except for making monsters stop spawning, I think players would be less likely to kill them unless they need the peace. In addition, perhaps reduce their hitpoints a lot.

3. Since the game is infinite, movement powerups such as ride the lightning have to be severely limited. This allows you to construct areas where things are out of reach unless you use a movement powerup. I recommend turning all movement stuff into time-limited potions. There could also be a very rare permanent version of one of these movement methods, but it should have serious negative consequences attached as well, so that activating it has a very real cost. Another possibility is to only allow one movement powerup at a time, but that would still allow reaching virtually every place.

I love my movement powerups. Limiting them would make the game feel more like a puzzle game than action game.

4. You have permadeath on your side in a very cool and fairly original way. Don't neglect to use it! Caves should be hazardous, and difficult to go down, with appropriate rewards. Perhaps you could make it such that if you die, you lose only the (town) supplies you gained since the last time you visited a town, unless you spelunk back to go back to retrieve your latest possessions. Wooden bridges should be rare. I also recommend adding in a suicide button in case the player gets stuck with no way out.

Agree on the wooden bridges part, I have not crafted a single one yet, although do not remove these items entirely from the "special rooms", just slightly reduce their spawnrate.
Losing items doesn't really make the game more fun. Often I just drop caves where I die brutally and go somewhere else, being forced to return back to gather my items, would lower my fun...

5. Get rid of the lather/rinse/repeat cycle. Weapons (crystals) should be available everywhere. Perhaps in the caves you can get bigger amounts since they're the source, but surely other people stashed rocks away as well if they're so precious. You then get to explore what you want to explore rather than being told by the game that it's now time to head to the caves because you need new weapons.

Actually finding the right crystals is easy once you learn where to find them. But perhaps bosses could have a chance of dropping some of these rarer items.

[x4000]

Heh, there's no shortage of constructive criticism -- it's just limited to mantis because that's where we ask for it to go.  Stuff that's said in the forums, if it's intended to be actionable, just needs to get put in mantis to actually get completed (it's rare that someone suggests something and that's the very next thing we do).  The exception is stuff that needs a lot of discussion before becoming actionable, and that's a place where the forums clearly outshine mantis.  But anyhow, if you're looking for the constructive criticisms, there are multiple hundreds of such things in mantis, and more being added all the time.

In terms of our gauging popularity by sales, that's certainly one metric but not the only one.  We also go by actual feedback from players and critics, and it's clear that people are excited about the potential, and many are enjoying what it is at the moment.  Our work is not remotely done, and the game isn't in a polished final state where everyone could enjoy it, this much is plain, but we never claimed it was at this point either.  Our experiences with people playing it and seeing it at Minecon were also really instructive on a lot of levels, most of them positive but also some regarding constructive criticism.

Regarding the specific points:

1. The areas being too large, I simply don't agree with.  That was definitely the case a while back, but in order for there to really be a sense of exploration while you're able to fight, there needs to be room for that stuff to happen.  The scale of this game, in terms of specific areas, is on par with a lot of other games.  Having to use a map to explore semi-realistically-sized buildings and caverns is something I simply like a lot, I'm sorry that you don't.  But part of the feel of really being an explorer is having lots of choices and then choosing the best way to go out of the options that you see.

2. Generally I quite agree that "if you give players tedious ways to do things that have no other disadvantage, they'll carry those things out and just get bored."  However, that's assuming that they actually have an incentive to do so.  You can destroy every tree in this game, too, with no cost other than time.  In Minecraft, you can mine literally every piece of ground you see if you want.  The only limit is your time... and the fact that those activities have no point past a certain level.  If you need wood, destroy trees.  If the monster nest is bothering you that much, by all means destroy it.  But destroying every monster nest... that's not something that the game even remotely requires; it's far easier to ignore a lot of the monster nests.  And if you ARE the sort that really wants to destroy monster nests due to whatever compulsion, you can always upgrade to something like Death Touch to do it more efficiently.  There's been a huge amount of discussion on monster nests in the past, enormous reams of criticism here and elsewhere, but my read is that at the moment folks seem to be pretty neutral to happy with them.  I don't feel like killing all the monster nests contributes enough of an advantage to the player for most people to get sucked into a cycle of killing every one that they see.

3. Yes, I could not agree more.  That's one of the biggest issues with the game at the moment, but that's more a factor of "not done yet" than any sort of design intent.  You'll notice there are a number of issues in mantis that are to-do items for myself to get to various things of this sort (most of them predating the beta release, it's not a new realization that this is needed).  Unlike Metroid or similar, though, we're not limiting people in terms of height of jumps or similar.  So storm dash and ride the lightning have no bearing on player ability to go everywhere, and hence there's no need to limit them until later.  There are too many things that require you to have basically infinite horizontal and vertical mobility, such as caves, etc.

4. I'm going to pull the "this is in very early stages" card one more time.  Repetitiveness is one of those things that I warned about when we first started beta.  There's a lot of content here, but it's not remotely enough to fill the world yet and make it so things aren't repetitive.  In terms of segregating out various gameplay activities into various parts of the game (caverns, interiors, etc), I disagree with the premise that this is inherently flawed.  With a Zelda game you know all the puzzles and the new items are in dungeons, and you know that certain types of quests are only in towns, and you know certain types of secrets are only in certain parts of the overworld, etc.  But that's not a problem, it actually helps guide the player.  The problem is that there isn't enough going on in the caves alone to make them interesting on their own merits long-term, etc.  Several other players have commented on basically this with regard to gems (again, in mantis not the forum), but it's essentially one of those "I quite agree with you on the current state of things, but that's just early beta for you."

5. Glad you love the art!  I was really pleased how that was the apparently almost universal opinion at Minecon, too.  By the way, the side-scroller switch wasn't remotely just because of art reasons.  There were gameplay considerations as well, and it's something I am really super glad we did.



It's always very difficult showing a work in progress in this sort of fashion, because you get some people that feel let down when they see the incomplete product.  Ultimately the product is benefiting a lot more from all the huge reams of constructive criticism we're getting on a daily basis, though (seriously, mantis is borderline overflowing), so my hope is that folks who feel disillusioned will still give the product a go when it's closer to finished.  That said, if they don't it's still been a process that I think is worthwhile to undertake publicly for a game that's fairly experimental; it's the process that results in ultimately the strongest product in the end, which is the main thing I think.

[x4000]

1. Area sizes should be reduced dramatically. The way areas are now, they're way past what can fit in players' memories. Right now players can really only remember the boss rooms because those are relatively few. I should be able to recall: this is the area that has this building with cool stuff. This is the area that has that really deep cave. That's how dynamic stories are woven in the player's mind. But it's all just a blur because there's too much stuff. With the decreased sizes, tedium will be reduced and areas will be more fun to explore. I suggest you try to initialize a world with much fewer and smaller areas/houses/caves/rooms etc and see if it helps the experience.

I think this can be fixed by putting NO useful things inside of "normal" rooms. That way players learn to only search for those "special" rooms. Size is not a matter once you learn to read the maps (in my opinion). It is slightly like the Metroid rooms with a square in them. Those were the interesting rooms, rest were transport rooms.

I think there is value to gameplay that encourages players to sort through signal to noise to a small degree.  In Metroid games there are still some minorly useful things in rooms without the square in them -- more missiles or health or whatever from the enemies you kill.  Having no rewards whatsoever except in designated spots tends to feel pretty barren.

2. Turns should advance every X minutes. There could be a countdown on the screen to remind you. X could vary by difficulty level. With time turned into a precious resource, suddenly it makes sense that I can't destroy every monster nest -- it's a waste of precious time. The goal of the game now shifts to finding the best stuff I can to equip my settlement/increase my strength before the inevitable invasion of the overlords and their minions. With time as a resource, a large world suddenly makes a lot more sense -- I need to sift through it to find the best stuff I can -- though I still suggest reducing the size. Building wind shelters would also be a real strategic choice: should I waste time trying to build this thing, or should I instead head straight for the resources and take my chances? I think this change alone would make the game far more interesting.

If killing monster nests did not give any reward (like they can now) except for making monsters stop spawning, I think players would be less likely to kill them unless they need the peace. In addition, perhaps reduce their hitpoints a lot.

In terms of reducing the reward you get for popping monster nests, that one might be something to do.

Regarding the turns auto-advancing, that's a big no-no-no-no thing.  Having the strategic game get lost or messed up because you were adventuring for a while is 100% counter to the design we're going for.  You should never feel time pressure in this game.  It's a Metroidvania game plus a turn-based strategy game.  Neither of those genres involve time pressure of the sort that auto-turns would add.

4. You have permadeath on your side in a very cool and fairly original way. Don't neglect to use it! Caves should be hazardous, and difficult to go down, with appropriate rewards. Perhaps you could make it such that if you die, you lose only the (town) supplies you gained since the last time you visited a town, unless you spelunk back to go back to retrieve your latest possessions. Wooden bridges should be rare. I also recommend adding in a suicide button in case the player gets stuck with no way out.

Agree on the wooden bridges part, I have not crafted a single one yet, although do not remove these items entirely from the "special rooms", just slightly reduce their spawnrate.
Losing items doesn't really make the game more fun. Often I just drop caves where I die brutally and go somewhere else, being forced to return back to gather my items, would lower my fun...

Agreed on the lost items thing not being fun.  That's how we used to do it in this game, and it was incredibly un-fun.

Regarding the wooden platforms being over-prevalent, I know that's the case and that's mainly because we don't have enough other rewards to fill those spots yet.  So the wooden platforms fill in the gaps at the moment and you wind up with waaay too many of them at the moment.

[Dizzard]

Or maybe they're expressing their opinion on Mantis -- I'm not sure

Whenever I have something in particular I'm not happy or unsure about I usually post it on mantis. Sometimes I post it in the Q&A thread too, unhappiness disguised as a question.

2. Monster nests. players get a feeling like they should destroy them

Am I the only person who's never felt the need to destroy monster nests just because I could? I mean sure I've attempted it but then my brain told me it wasn't worth the trouble and that I could just avoid enemies instead.  It sounds you all have some serious nest stomping issues.

you've created a very obvious cycle and essentially separated the game out into 2 mini-games (aside from the strategic and action part) that have to be iterated over constantly, whether the player wants to or not. I may be enjoying myself on the overworld area, but here I go again heading into the caves to improve my weapons. It's not even a matter of how often I need to update my weapons. Just the fact that weapons can only be improved in the caverns means there's a strong incentive constantly pushing me to go there to see if I can improve them.

This is a good point actually, it does feel a little like you're compelled to upgrade....when it's not always nice to be TOLD (as good as told anyway) "hey you need to do this or else!" (in fact it's not nice at all) I have always felt some irritation at the game in this regard. When there's more to be doing with you're time in later updates this problem will be even worse I'd imagine. I think it would be nice if eventually you could assign npcs to do the grunt work while you manage them and use your time for the really big special things. Or instead of that have a greater options when it comes to upgrading instead of just going underground.

1. Area sizes should be reduced dramatically. The way areas are now, they're way past what can fit in players' memories. Right now players can really only remember the boss rooms because those are relatively few. I should be able to recall: this is the area that has this building with cool stuff. This is the area that has that really deep cave. That's how dynamic stories are woven in the player's mind. But it's all just a blur because there's too much stuff. With the decreased sizes, tedium will be reduced and areas will be more fun to explore. I suggest you try to initialize a world with much fewer and smaller areas/houses/caves/rooms etc and see if it helps the experience.

This makes sense, after all it's not like there is ever going to be any shortage of tiles/regions appearing (at least not for a long long time) so making the regions themselves smaller wouldn't be that much of an issue. It could make each individual node/tile feel more manageable and yet have the entire world (that could possibly be bigger with reduced region sizes.) feel like the "vast" part of the game.

Just because you want a vast adventure doesn't mean you have to PLUS size every single area in the game. I usually speed travel the large areas anyway (regardless of level unless it's out of range) so effectively I'm cutting down on the size of the areas manually.

I don't have as much of an issue with interiors or even with the caves. It's mostly the above ground areas seem a little odd since I'd imagine the vast majority of people will be speed travelling through them.....so why not just make each individual node smaller but add more of them to a region tile....so the size stays the same but it's divided up a little more.

Turns should advance every X minutes. There could be a countdown on the screen to remind you. X could vary by difficulty level. With time turned into a precious resource, suddenly it makes sense that I can't destroy every monster nest -- it's a waste of precious time. The goal of the game now shifts to finding the best stuff I can to equip my settlement/increase my strength before the inevitable invasion of the overlords and their minions. With time as a resource, a large world suddenly makes a lot more sense -- I need to sift through it to find the best stuff I can -- though I still suggest reducing the size. Building wind shelters would also be a real strategic choice: should I waste time trying to build this thing, or should I instead head straight for the resources and take my chances? I think this change alone would make the game far more interesting.

While I like the idea and I'm sure this is something that will come to the game, I hope that along with it comes better options for defending your settlement and preparing your settlement for attack. Right now if this was implemented I really would have no hope trying to fight off all the hordes by myself.

I don't expect people -- especially people on this board, who are enamored with the game as it is -- to agree with my criticisms. I do think, however, that they're shared by a not insignificant number of people who used to be very excited about this game. Hopefully at the very least my comments will allow the devs to take a step back and re-evaluate some of these points.

I think you speak a lot of sense. I hope you stick around.

[Castruccio]

While I don't have the time to quote and discuss all the things that I think are good about Bluddy's post, I just want to say that I am an ardent Arcen fan (I have played both AI War and Tidals for hundreds of hours in the past year) and I have the exact same concerns about AVWW that he does. 

In my opinion, the game is not nearly as fun as the other Arcen games, in large part because it is too massive, too repetitive, too meaningless, and overwhelming in a way that makes it feel empty and boring once you've been inside a few buildings and explored a few caves.   It has neither the strategic decision making and thrill of discovery that made AI War great, nor the electrifying intensity that makes Tidals so fun, and its not an entertaining  game in its current form.

  I'm no game designer so I'll leave the speculation about how it can be fixed to those who are better at thinking about these things than I am, but from the perspective of a loyal customer and fan I can honestly say that I do not find the fundamental premise of this game as compelling as Arcen's other products.  I am glad someone has finally come out and said what I have been thinking for a while now but have been unable to articulate for myself.

[x4000]

I don't have as much of an issue with interiors or even with the caves. It's mostly the above ground areas seem a little odd since I'd imagine the vast majority of people will be speed travelling through them.....so why not just make each individual node smaller but add more of them to a region tile....so the size stays the same but it's divided up a little more.

I'm a little confused by this, as adding more transitions but keeping the land area per region the same seems like it would just make it so that you have to sit through more loading screens.  To some extent, for the game to create interesting surface tunnels or to have the room to actually place a goodly number of buildings or whatever, a certain width is needed on the exterior areas.  Especially on the ones that are essentially one-dimensional since they have a ground and no underground.  I dunno.

In my opinion, the game is not nearly as fun as the other Arcen games, in large part because it is too massive, too repetitive, too meaningless, and overwhelming in a way that makes it feel empty and boring once you've been inside a few buildings and explored a few caves.   It has neither the strategic decision making and thrill of discovery that made AI War great, nor the electrifying intensity that makes Tidals so fun, and its not an entertaining  game in its current form.

This sort of sentiment just depresses me so much.  I'm really glad you weren't around during the beta for AI War or for Tidalis, you would have felt the same way with them.  Incomplete things are very different from complete things.  Constructive feedback is great, but it really gets me down when folks are complaining that an unfinished game isn't as fun as a finished game.  A little faith please? 

If we were calling the game done that would be one thing, but what we're doing is opening up the game in a very early state to get feedback on it.  Not "this isn't as fun because it has very little content" sort of feedback, but more feedback on the core mechanics and such.  For the people who are really into the game, I think that the reason they like it so much is that the core mechanics really click with them, and they're playing it in a similar fashion to how one might play an FPS game -- where it's all about the shooting and the visceral fun of that. 

That's the foundation of everything, and that has to be solid for a lot of people to enjoy it.  We've been working on that, and working on tightening up some of the other mechanics that were over-complicated to start with, or which just needed some refinement to be particularly fun.  Look at the release notes and see, that's been the focus.  Once that foundation is solid, then that's when the rest of the content and such, and the higher-level strategies and story elements, can be layered on top; and it sounds like that's what you're looking for, but we're not remotely to that phase yet.  Nor do we claim to be.

[Dizzard]

Well AVWW is in beta so there is a fair chance that there will be things that get really repetitive and maybe some parts of the game won't really be all that fun. That's understandable at this early stage.

The key words are "potential" and "vision" which AVWW has mountains of.

(As for the more loading screens, I see your point.....I suppose when more features are included in the game and there will be more unusual things to discover and do the size of the space won't be as much of an issue)

[Castruccio]

  This sort of sentiment just depresses me so much.  I'm really glad you weren't around during the beta for AI War or for Tidalis, you would have felt the same way with them.  Incomplete things are very different from complete things.  Constructive feedback is great, but it really gets me down when folks are complaining that an unfinished game isn't as fun as a finished game.  A little faith please? 

If we were calling the game done that would be one thing, but what we're doing is opening up the game in a very early state to get feedback on it.  Not "this isn't as fun because it has very little content" sort of feedback, but more feedback on the core mechanics and such.  For the people who are really into the game, I think that the reason they like it so much is that the core mechanics really click with them, and they're playing it in a similar fashion to how one might play an FPS game -- where it's all about the shooting and the visceral fun of that. 

That's the foundation of everything, and that has to be solid for a lot of people to enjoy it.  We've been working on that, and working on tightening up some of the other mechanics that were over-complicated to start with, or which just needed some refinement to be particularly fun.  Look at the release notes and see, that's been the focus.  Once that foundation is solid, then that's when the rest of the content and such, and the higher-level strategies and story elements, can be layered on top; and it sounds like that's what you're looking for, but we're not remotely to that phase yet.  Nor do we claim to be.

My intention is not to criticize you for something that is incomplete in terms of content. I bought the beta  knowing it was a beta and I'll continue to play around with it as the updates roll in. I don't regret my decision one bit and I'm glad to be able to support Arcen in anyway I can, even if I'm not a huge fan of the product being developed. 

 I merely wanted to say that I agree with  many of Bluddy's criticisms of certain fundamental flaws in the games current design.  This criticism doesn't have as much to do with content (more stories, monsters, regions, etc) as it does with what you call the "core mechanics" of the game itself.   Maybe the game just isn't for me and that's the problem (I'm not a big FPS fan and you indicate that it appeals to FPS fans).

  Either way, I have every reason to trust your design decisions because your past games are so good, and I have continually been impressed by your willingness to reinvent AI War and to make sweeping changes for the sake of good gameplay.  It's a kind of risk-taking that you don't often see in the game design world and it's quite admirable.

[x4000]

Cheers, guys.  I guess to some extent you have to understand the tenuous mental/emotional balance it takes for Keith and I to get much done on a new game like this.  I think it's the same for all game designers, but we make it infinitely more difficult on ourselves by trying wildly new things and also inviting public feedback at an early stage.  To some extent that's kind of asking for emotional turmoil.  It's another big risk that we take, but it's paid off really well for us in our other projects (AI War post-1.0, but still).

When it comes to working on a massive long-term project, there's kind of a fine line you have to walk with watching the forest and the individual trees.  Sometimes you need to ignore the forest for a while and just focus on some specific trees; sometimes you really need to look at the forest and make some surprising clear-cuts and re-plantings that you didn't foresee.  There's always kind of a mix, but sometimes you just need to take a tree that is "done but not perfect" and ignore it for a while while you focus on other trees that aren't even planted yet.  Then by the time you finish some new plantings you have a new perspective on that original tree that you weren't sure about before.  Then you either prune that tree, fertilize it differently, or maybe bulldoze it and bring in something else in place of it.

That's really stretching the analogy, but it's the best I can think of at the moment.  Whenever a game isn't yet done, that's the most difficult time to work on it, because there's so much in your head that isn't yet concrete.  And there's uncertainty with each of those items -- a lot of the ideas that Keith and I have actually don't have a single planned implementation, but 2-3 similar implementations that we're not yet sure which will be the final one we choose.  And often it's actually a fourth hidden variant that we go with, that is similar to our original idea but not something we could have thought up in advance.

That's why you wind up with something that evolves in this really odd and unpredictable way, and even we don't know where it will end up in some ways.  If you had showed AI War 5.0 to me two years ago, I would have been shocked by how little it resembled what I was trying to do at the time.  And yet it much more accurately captures the spirit of what I was striving to do even then.

One good example is that until the last 3 months of AI War's development there wasn't even an AI to play against -- it was all PVP!  And until the last 2 months or so of its development, it was just traditional RTS AI.  All that stuff with the AI Progress, and the asymmetrical battles, and so on, hadn't yet been invented.  I knew from the start with the game that "I wanted to feel like Ender Wiggin," and I had a lot of specific ideas on AI tactics and structure that I wanted to implement, and I knew the general scale and such that I was going for.  And the mechanics of the gameplay itself, too.  But how that all came together, and what actually made the 1.0 version (let alone the 5.0 version) really didn't come until super late in the development process.  Even things like the Advanced Research Stations didn't come about until the last month of alpha for AI War; before that you had access to all ships at all times, which was obviously a problem.  But it didn't really become apparent HOW much of a problem it was until there were 29ish different classes of mobile ships that you had to choose from at any given second.

Everything has not yet gelled with A Valley Without Wind.  That's a given.  For me, it's implicit in the process we're going through, and we won't call it 1.0 until we hit that point.  There's a few epiphanies that are still missing for this game, and of course it's stressful to think that they might not come, but for me they always have in the past so I just have to have faith in that and the team (and the players) and keep chipping away "everything that doesn't look like an elephant" to use the old joke.  This is why it's such an emotionally troublesome time in a pre-1.0 project for us, is that we're in uncharted territory always and we never know the exact best path until we walk down a few wrong paths first.  It's an unusual way to make games, but I think the reason our games turn out so unique is because we use that process.  Really innovative stuff can't be thought up far in advance; at least not by me, I'm not that clever.

For me, having lots of other people involved makes this both easier and harder. 

It's easier in the sense that bad ideas get flagged more quickly, and good ideas also get some degree of validation so that I can "stick a pin in them" and stop reevaluating them so frequently (anything that reduces the number of ideas swirling around in my head at any given time is a good thing for my sanity at this stage of a project).  It also makes it easier in that players come up with ridiculously cool ideas that I'd never have thought of.  Did you know that Free Roaming Defender mode in AI War was a player suggestion?  So were about 2/3 of the other hotkeys, especially all the really cool ones that players really like (L to divide forces in half, etc).  Having players there to do sanity checks, tell me what they enjoy and don't enjoy, and so on is very helpful and makes things easier.

On the other hand, it's much harder because some folks cross the line a bit, by intent or unintentionally.  I'm not asking to be treated with kid gloves, but I also don't want to be criticized for anything that's not there when the game isn't complete.  That's just really not helpful, and tends to send us (or at least me) into some mild depression.  When it's someone who is genuinely trying to help and who's a fan of our other stuff, that actually makes it worse because that really makes me start questioning all sorts of things that I really should be leaving alone at this point; at this stage in the process certain things need to fallow until other things are further along.  It's not even that I don't want people to speak up, because I do; but the way in which people speak up can make a big difference.  Suggesting a new feature, or even a replacement feature for something that exists, in a tone that doesn't suggest that we've screwed the pooch with what we have so far, really goes a long way.

We're really putting ourselves out there in a way that not many people do, and it's a very... trying thing.  But this is something like the fourth time we've done it, and we continue to do it because it really does pay dividends for us and players.  I can really relate to how Stephanie Meyer felt when that draft copy of one of her books got pasted around the Internet and people (including her fans) were really hyper-critical of it.  She wound up not finishing that book because it was such an emotionally trying thing, as I recall.  I can really understand that.  Not that anything has put me remotely near that walk-away point (not that I even can walk away), and certainly nothing in this thread is all that bad.  But it would be fair to say this thread derailed my whole afternoon.

Everything was well intentioned, and I'm not trying to play the blame game for something that is in a lot of ways a failing on my end (should be better at taking this sort of feedback), but I guess I thought I'd share what goes on on this side of the computer screen.  I figure that, by saying "hey, this specific tone and style of feedback is actually a bit destructive to our ability to work effectively," we all win in the end and that's better than just bottling things up.  Perhaps that's a bit more than some folks wanted to know, but in general anything prefixed with "I think that ___ is a huge problem that will/is destroying your game/my ability to ever enjoy it" is inherently a bit of an ultimatum.  Tell us how you feel on this or that part of it, tell me you feel that some specific component is missing, whatever; I eat that stuff up, and we have hundreds and hundreds of that sort of thing being said on mantis all the time.

Anyway, that's how I feel.  Hopefully no one takes offense or feels like they are being chastised, as that's not how I mean it.  But this whole feedback thing needs to be at least a little bit of a two-way street if I'm going to still be doing this in 30 years without having a coronary first.

[Coppermantis]

Regarding monster nests-- I find that I only bother destroying them if they produce a particularly annoying enemy (such as bats. Can't stand those things) or if If I need to protect myself when accomplishing a longer goal in the room. Beating a boss is hard enough without bats or skelebots piking you as you battle.

And yeah, Most constructive criticism/suggestions are on Mantis.

[Bluddy]

Listen Chris, I didn't mean to cause you such anguish and I certainly didn't intend to sound as harsh as I must have. Our relationship is inherently asymmetric here -- for me, AVWW is another game, while for you it's not only your livelihood, it's also your creative child that you put your everything into. I get that. It reminds me of Jeff Vogel's Bottom Feeder post where he advises Indies not to venture into the forums because the criticism is so painful.

I think I also better understand the game design methodology that Arcen uses. In effect, what you're doing is more creative research than game development. It sounds like most things are fluid at this point as far as the game is concerned, and I mean that in a really good way. Perhaps it would be better to call this an alpha rather than a beta, just for comparison's sake. It sounds like your games spend most of their time in what could be termed a semi-alpha stage, even after they're released. Again, I think that's a very positive thing. It just makes it that much harder for us as consumers. I have to figure out if this is a game I want to buy, and I can only do that by comparing the experience here to other experiences I get from other games calling themselves beta. This is not a personal thing limited to myself -- this is what pretty much everyone does, and I think that my post does express the sentiments of other people, so despite the fact that it was painful to deal with, it's something that needed to be clarified.

[superking]

just popping in to agree with Bluddys first post in most respects, I am one of those silent purchasers who was turned off by the points raised here and ceased playing for the time being

[zebramatt]

I think, Bluddy, you made a very salient point in your first post when you said, "...this forum isn't the kind of forum I'm used to in a beta."

I've been involved in a fair few betas and you're absolutely right. In fact, this forum isn't the kind of forum I'm used to on the internet in general. (I suppose that's why I'm still here.) The entire relationship Arcen fosters on here - building a community where the developers themselves are very much equals with their fans in a great many regards ("first among equals" is a cliche which fits) - rather than the normal environment of consumers whose only power lies in embargoes and strong words, and developers who have all the rest.

It's wrapped up in the whole approach to developing games so much more out in the open which Chris has discussed at length, but it's an important point in its own right. I think there's plenty of constructive criticism on this forum - but it's couched in a so much more reasonable, level fashion. There aren't any ultimatums or shouting-to-be-heard. (Mostly!) Just open, equitable discussion. I can see how that might not look like criticism a lot of the time - may even look like so much brown-nosing, in fact - but the truth is it's precisely the sort of criticism usually exchanged between close friends or family, rather than consumers and producers.

Just thought I'd throw that out there!

[goodgimp]

I think I also better understand the game design methodology that Arcen uses. In effect, what you're doing is more creative research than game development. It sounds like most things are fluid at this point as far as the game is concerned, and I mean that in a really good way. Perhaps it would be better to call this an alpha rather than a beta, just for comparison's sake. It sounds like your games spend most of their time in what could be termed a semi-alpha stage, even after they're released. Again, I think that's a very positive thing. It just makes it that much harder for us as consumers. I have to figure out if this is a game I want to buy, and I can only do that by comparing the experience here to other experiences I get from other games calling themselves beta. This is not a personal thing limited to myself -- this is what pretty much everyone does, and I think that my post does express the sentiments of other people, so despite the fact that it was painful to deal with, it's something that needed to be clarified.

Yea, the "beta" term really has been overused to the point of not really knowing what it means, these days.   It's good to see you cross-post your thoughts that you've laid out on Qt3 to these forums, whether or not people (Arcen, other forum members) agree isn't really important. I think providing feedback from a contrarian POV is important for sparking some discussion. Maybe it's a "game is not for you" thing, maybe it's a "game is unfinished" thing, either way I think posting constructive feedback as you did is healthy for the game. 

For my own sake, I'm really interested to see how you (well, even me, for that matter!) feel about the game once Arcen decides it's "1.0". I hope you'll come back and post a follow-up, even if it's "Yea, the game still isn't grabbing me".

Anyway, *waves* from KevinC at Qt3. Nice to see you posting here, and for a lot of constructive criticism, check out Mantis! I don't think it requires registration to view, but I could be wrong.