First Impressions (Mostly Good!), Feedback

[Goncyn]

Hi all.

I first played AVWW at PAX East this year, and at the time, it didn't grab me. I died in the first cave in the intro mission after getting cornered by some skelebot grunts. Nothing exciting had happened by then, so instead of choosing another character and trying again, I moved on to another booth with something else shiny.

On Monday, I happened across Chris's blog post about AVWW 1.1, and I really liked everything he had to say. I like it when developers give some insight into the design process and why they change things. I also agreed with his reasoning on every point. I bought AVWW on Steam that night, set up a server for myself and my friends, and got to killing things and collecting loot. So far it's a lot of fun! I'm very glad I bought it.

First, a couple bad things.

• On the wiki, in the in-game help, and on the forum, I've been told to surgically loot buildings by going straight for the stash rooms because all the best stuff is in there. That doesn't seem to be true. I've been in dozens of stash rooms that had nothing but a few consciousness shards and wooden platforms, while other "normal" rooms in the same building were full of enchant containers and the breakable chests with red enchant containers. The only reliable way I've found to locate red enchant containers is to search every room in every building. That gets tedious.
• I actually find the whole concept of "enchant progress" kinda grindy. Enchants are the game's loot, and to have them distributed at a clearly-defined rate takes some of the fun out of it. You don't see a message that says "57.3% progress to next rare" when you kill a monster in Diablo. Splitting the content between buildings and caves exacerbates the problem. I find the cave chunks more fun to explore -- the layout are more open and organic, which makes the platforming and combat more fun -- but while I'm in a cave, I don't get any enchants. Buildings have all the character-improving loot, but interior chunks are mostly tight quarters with lots of right angles and dead ends, making dodging hard and navigation annoying. All these factors come together in the dreaded maze room. It's a huge room with dozens of enchant containers (and monsters to kill for unlockable progress). The optimal play is obviously to collect them all, so I feel compelled to endlessly jump up, kill monster, grab container; fall down, kill monster, grab container; run across, kill monster, grab container; all while mostly staring at the chunk minimap to navigate the room and the message log to watch my progress tick up: 5... 11... 17.... There's no variety or surprise to these rooms, just a game of 52-enchant pickup.

Here is a short list of improvements I would like to see in the future:

• Make it true that stash rooms always have the best rewards, much like destroyed rooms never have any rewards. Take enchant containers out of the normal rooms, and put the common supplies like shards, platforms, and boxes there instead. Save the good stuff for the stashes.
• Stash rooms should never be maze rooms, and maze rooms should not contain enchants. Make them purely a navigational challenge (where is the door?) that you can escape quickly without feeling like you missed something. Some additional local randomization in the maze itself would be nice, too. Maybe there is a pocket of a different time period thrown in the maze somewhere?
• I would like to see green enchant containers go away, leaving only the red ones, and the "enchant progress" mechanic retired.
• Finding an occasionally chest or cache or some kind in cave chunks with a red enchant container inside would be nifty. This might be fixed just by improving stash rooms in the buildings you sometimes find underground, though.
• Give new players joining a persistent server some starter enchants. All the enchants I picked up in the intro mission and settlement (featherfall, light, etc.) are gone now, and friends who join the server for the first time are stuck using Ball of Light to see anything until they get lucky with a drop.
• It would be nice if the "world events" (I forget the exact name) screen that lists missions completed and whatnot were a vertical table so I didn't have to click each icon in turn.

I really like this game, or I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of writing this up. I think my favorite thing about is how it keeps getting more complex and varied as you unlock more content. Looking forward to what you do with it in the future!

[keith.lamothe]

Glad to hear 1.1 made someone interested who wasn't before

Give new players joining a persistent server some starter enchants. All the enchants I picked up in the intro mission and settlement (featherfall, light, etc.) are gone now, and friends who join the server for the first time are stuck using Ball of Light to see anything until they get lucky with a drop.

If the game is past tier 1 on the first continent (or on any continent after the first) then new players are given some starter enchants.  And there's a light-enchant in every settlement that everyone can pick up (if you pick it up you stop seeing it, but it's still there).

Stash rooms will be changing a fair bit in 1.2 according to current plans.

Thanks for the feedback

[Goncyn]

If the game is past tier 1 on the first continent (or on any continent after the first) then new players are given some starter enchants.  And there's a light-enchant in every settlement that everyone can pick up (if you pick it up you stop seeing it, but it's still there).

Ahh. I asked my friend a couple times to make sure there wasn't anything on the ground in the settlement, but he said there wasn't. Maybe it should be easier to see, or you should just add it to a new player's inventory automatically?

[BenMiff]

First off, welcome.

Now to your points. (As you'll likely find out, the community here is quite active in terms of suggestions and discussing them, so I figured I'll kick it off.)

Make it true that stash rooms always have the best rewards, much like destroyed rooms never have any rewards. Take enchant containers out of the normal rooms, and put the common supplies like shards, platforms, and boxes there instead. Save the good stuff for the stashes.

This is actually a bit of an ongoing thing over in Mantis (the suggestion tracker). Removing all the decent stuff from everywhere else isn't really a good solution (since it's nice to get decent stuff elsewhere as well, plus over time you learn certain rooms are good for certain things (hallways for clay, basements for red enchants, etc.)); I'd much rather see the stash rooms becoming better via new items and the like.

Stash rooms should never be maze rooms, and maze rooms should not contain enchants. Make them purely a navigational challenge (where is the door?) that you can escape quickly without feeling like you missed something. Some additional local randomization in the maze itself would be nice, too. Maybe there is a pocket of a different time period thrown in the maze somewhere?

The problem with making them purely navigational challenges is the minimap (top left hand corner) would make a mockery of it, plus a door hunt isn't massively entertaining without any clues beyond the minimap revelation. I'd suggest some kind of indicator in the background dotted around that give you direction(s) or distance (never both) to all the doors in the room, so you can deduce where the doors are more and more each time you see one of these background murals. I'd agree with taking out the enchants, though, or replacing them with one or two red containers (whose location would then also be indicated with the background murals.)

I would like to see green enchant containers go away, leaving only the red ones, and the "enchant progress" mechanic retired.

This would make enchants either really rare to get (which isn't so fun from the acquisitiveness perspective) or make the gain rate ludicrously high. However, to feed back to the reason for this (discrete 10%-from-every-container gains), some unpredictability could be introduced; rather than the flat 10%, have them give a random amount between 5 and 15% so you can't be certain how many containers it is until your next enchant a lot of the time.

Finding an occasionally chest or cache or some kind in cave chunks with a red enchant container inside would be nifty. This might be fixed just by improving stash rooms in the buildings you sometimes find underground, though.

The big thing for caves are gems; I'd like to see some use for them since (for me at least) you tend to end up with loads more than you need by tier 2 - 3 on each continent. Since they're essentially spell components, some way to convert them into spell power (temporary buff) might be good.

Give new players joining a persistent server some starter enchants. All the enchants I picked up in the intro mission and settlement (featherfall, light, etc.) are gone now, and friends who join the server for the first time are stuck using Ball of Light to see anything until they get lucky with a drop.

I believe this already occurs, though I play single player so I'm not that knowledgable on multiplayer.

It would be nice if the "world events" (I forget the exact name) screen that lists missions completed and whatnot were a vertical table so I didn't have to click each icon in turn.

Agreed, though I wouldn't want to be able to "warp" to it; giving the location and letting you find your way there would be fine, though.

[Goncyn]

Interesting comments, BenMiff. I'm glad to hear stash rooms are already getting some love, and I hope that comes along sooner than later. I think that's the best improvement that could be made to the game right now.

Regarding enchant progress, balancing the rate of enchant acquisition is just a math problem -- you increase the spawning of red containers just enough to compensate for removing the green ones. It wouldn't automatically unbalance the game. Also, I am pretty sure that the amount of progress you get per green container already varies.

[BenMiff]

Okay, so here's my problem with adding the odd red enchant to replace all the green enchants - it means you'll get visible progress much less often, so the feel will go from (near) constant progression to sporadic boosts.; that's the "really rare to get" half of the issue. (For instance, I wouldn't want to have boss enchant drops be chance-to-get, since when there are low-ish drop rates (it would be about 10%) things feel more grindy, not less, since a lot of the things you do won't drop what you want and so feel like wasted effort.)

As to a solution... not so sure on that one. Will need to think on it a bit, though if someone else comes up with a solution that'd be good too. ^^

[keith.lamothe]

If the game is past tier 1 on the first continent (or on any continent after the first) then new players are given some starter enchants.  And there's a light-enchant in every settlement that everyone can pick up (if you pick it up you stop seeing it, but it's still there).

Ahh. I asked my friend a couple times to make sure there wasn't anything on the ground in the settlement, but he said there wasn't. Maybe it should be easier to see, or you should just add it to a new player's inventory automatically?

They're supposed to be automatically added

Edit: except the light one, that's just supposed to be on the ground

[Goncyn]

They're supposed to be automatically added

Edit: except the light one, that's just supposed to be on the ground

Yes, I meant the light enchant, which he didn't find. I actually just asked him about it again, and he swears he ran all the way to each end of the settlement. Maybe he jumped over it? He had initially logged in when the world was still tier 1, so your starter enchants are probably working as intended. It would be nice if they were provided even in tier 1, though.

[NyQuil]

I have to agree on one point, stash rooms should never be maze rooms.   I never feel it is worth my time exploring these rooms beyond a small radius where it is easy to grab a few enchants and get back to the door.

[Misery]

• I actually find the whole concept of "enchant progress" kinda grindy. Enchants are the game's loot, and to have them distributed at a clearly-defined rate takes some of the fun out of it. You don't see a message that says "57.3% progress to next rare" when you kill a monster in Diablo.
  

Ah, but Diablo has it's own problems.

One issue I've always had with Diablo and it's brethren, and a big reason why I'd really NOT like to see AVWW's loot system be like theirs, is simple:  Those games spit out absolutely stupid amounts of loot, and 99.9999% of it is damn near useless.  For every 1 good piece of equipment you find in that type of game, you'll have gone through about 1000 useless drops to get to it.  Those games are enjoyable, but I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate digging through all of that crap ALL THE FREAKING TIME.

AVWW though does it differently, and I like it.   I equate it more to something like, say, grabbing coins in the original Super Mario Bros.... the very first game, mind you, when you didn't get 100 extra lives just by looking at a goomba funny.    Individual coins by themselves didn't do anything special, but every time you reached 100, it was very satisfying to then get that extra life.   Enchants in AVWW often feel that way to me; it's much more interesting than popping a foe, only to have it explode into 50 swords that you'd NEVER USE (but have to dig through to make sure of this fact).    Not to mention, that this is also what the Opal store is for;  if you want a new enchant RIGHT FREAKING NOW, you go there and buy one.    Frankly, a Diablo-style loot system would annoy the hell outta me.  It's been done to death, and it's rarely done very well.

Though, one other thing you can do is to go into Abandoned Towns, and enter some of those buildings.  Dont look for stash rooms;  instead look for "attics".  There are chests to be found in these, which, when broken, drop a red enchant.   They can appear in other areas too, but I've found they're most in abandoned towns (attics in other areas may not contain any at all).

All these factors come together in the dreaded maze room. It's a huge room with dozens of enchant containers (and monsters to kill for unlockable progress). The optimal play is obviously to collect them all, so I feel compelled to endlessly jump up, kill monster, grab container; fall down, kill monster, grab container; run across, kill monster, grab container; all while mostly staring at the chunk minimap to navigate the room and the message log to watch my progress tick up: 5... 11... 17.... There's no variety or surprise to these rooms, just a game of 52-enchant pickup.

Actually, no..... that ISNT the optimal way to do it, far from it actually. 

This is part of the design of the game:  You ARE NOT supposed to be trying to get 100% of everything, even in individual rooms.   Part of the game is scouting different areas, and deciding which ones seem like the best uses of your time.   Maze rooms are full of enchant charges, buuuuuuuuuuuut, going through them TAKES FOREVER.   Is this the best use of your time?  What other things could you be doing to further your progress more efficiently?   Just because a big room is full of shiny things, doesnt mean that it's best to run around grabbing ALL of them.  Look at the situation, and judge for yourself.  Try other things.   I actually find that boss tower missions are waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy better for getting enchant charges than maze rooms (frankly though, damn near anything is better than maze rooms).  Keep in mind though:  If you're concentrating too much on getting enchants, that means you're NOT getting other things that may also help (like ingredients for new spells).   Decision making of this sort can be tough, but it's integral to the game.

Make it true that stash rooms always have the best rewards, much like destroyed rooms never have any rewards.

The fact that this isnt the case right now, is mostly just due to some balance issues, as it actually IS supposed to be the case.   The devs are quite aware of this one, it's been brought up numerous times as changes occurred between 1.0 and 1.1.   I think you can expect this to be worked on sooner rather than later.

Same with the caves;  right now there's not much reason to explore caves.  In theory the main reason to explore caves is to get ores (opal, sapphire, citrine, whatever).  The problem right now, is you need VERY FEW of these, even to power a huge number of spells for the rest of a continent.  5-10 minutes in a cave that gives sapphire, say, can get me so much sapphire that even if I get EVERY spell that requires it, I'll still never use it all up.   And Boss Delve missions can give you even more absurd amounts of these ores (WITHOUT having to explore for them).   Caves right now arent all that useful, definitely hoping to see this one fixed soon.



Oh, and as for the wiki:   just ignore it.  It's right now heavily outdated, since so many things have changed with 1.1.

[Goncyn]

Fair point about Diablo and its ilk dropping many useless items, but so far it's been my experience that AVWW drops quite few enchants I just reclaim instantly, too.

You're exactly right about maze rooms not being a good use of time, but they are so shiny! I guess that's my problem with them. They tempt you toward tedium.

I'm curious what a solution to the overabundance of cave resources might look like.

[Misery]

Fair point about Diablo and its ilk dropping many useless items, but so far it's been my experience that AVWW drops quite few enchants I just reclaim instantly, too.

You're exactly right about maze rooms not being a good use of time, but they are so shiny! I guess that's my problem with them. They tempt you toward tedium.

I'm curious what a solution to the overabundance of cave resources might look like.

The nice thing about the enchants are, a great many of them ARE useful, but it does depend alot on the player.   I actually keep quite a pile of them on hand, and often switch out based on the situation.  I'm playing at a high difficulty, so even small changes can make a difference.   For example, I might have an air-power enchant that gives 60% boost to that element, but then I might have another one that gives only a 40% boost to that element, but also at the same time gives something like 10% mana recharge, or 10 deflection, or whatever, and I'll keep BOTH of those, and switch based on the exact situation.   Generally I have multiples of every type of enchant.

At least the reclaim system is THERE..... thought that one was a pretty good idea.   Diablo had the problem of all them useless swords being really and truly USELESS, often in that type of game even selling them isnt worth the bother.   Here though, reclaiming can help you get more towards the enchants you are after, so that's nice.  They're never COMPLETELY worthless.


As for the cave thing.... I dont think it's so much an overabundance of the ores/stones, as it is that the spell recipes are really unbalanced right now.  They work well for the actual arcane ingredients, but the numbers of different ores you need are so low that they may as well not even be there.

I can think of a few things to do for this:

1. increase the ore cost of most spells.  By alot.

Or 2, offer other options to use those ores for.   As opposed to JUST for spells.  For example, the guardian scrolls; anything above "moderate" is damn near impossible to come by most of the time.  Give me the ability to, say, put 25 (arbitrary number) ores of a certain type and squash them into a "moderate" scroll I already have, to boost it to the next level.   Or also give the option to use large piles of ores to craft the building scrolls, particularly now since the personality structures have become really useful.   If I could take, say, 50 sapphire, and use it to choose from a variety of crafted building-scrolls, that'd be nice.   It'd take at least a bit of effort to collect the sapphire (though, really, even getting that number does NOT take all that long once you've gotten used to the caves), and then it'd be USEFUL for something.   And it'd give a use for ores that you arent really LOOKING for, but just happen to collect as you go about other objectives.