How are people playing the game?

[Terraziel]

I keep almost posting a number of complaints, but they are so obvious and major that i feel like i must be doing something wrong.

So how are people actually playing this game?

how are people managing to upgrade their spells to the second tier?
does everyone just upgrade fireball and lightning bolt and ignore the other spells?
does everyone just struggle through without upgrading?

as some examples, as I see it Coral and Sea Essence are impossible to acquire, at least I've not found a way to survive acid long enough to unlock coral and Sea Essence just doesn't spawn.  Umbra Ember, is a tier 5 ingredient for a tier 2 spell, this cuts out Creeping Death, Energy Pulse and Tidal Pulse. so that's 3 of the 5 "basic" spells gone.

lightning bolt is all down to actually being lucky enough for charred amber to spawn, as opposed to just lots of welkin gel and useless buildings, though unlocking it is easy enough. in the last few of my worlds (pre-buildings) the only reward (despite having unlocked a number of rare commodities) was welkin gel, I have no option but to play through the missions which not only gain me nothing but increase the enemy progress to the next tier, in the vain hope that the next mission to spawn will help me.

In the welkin gel filled worlds mentioned above I have been forced in to tier 3 with no way of getting most of my spells to even tier 2, and by that point playing has become an act of tedium rather than enjoyment, its made worse by the fact that simply treading water actually makes the game harder. tier one spells can fairly easily deal with tier 2 skelebots fast enough to complete a battleground mission, but throw in those tank things and clockwork probes and it turns into trench warfare, with neither side doing sufficient damage to actually progress.

With the addition of buildings this is even worse, as you have diminished the opportunities to gain rare commodities significantly, and as it seems to me that you have to acquire the initial buildings and people(skills) in a pretty specific order most of the building rewards are useless as well.

The guardian power's also strike me as terrible it costs me 40ep to gain a spell that gives me 2ep? or the other powers which take 40ep to acquire and simply give me the opportunity to spend another 40ep on a mission (I'll admit that's an assumption having never actually been able to use them).

and rant over....

So what am I missing? other than a way to resist acid damage which I would assume is hidden in a stash somewhere.

[TerraSleet]

Generally, yes my loadout has been limited due to all the locked commodities, mainly to Lightning and Miasma whip since everything else uses rare commodities that only appear at high tiers or past Continent 1. The game is in a semi-unstable state right now because of all the huge changes to game mechanics (and holes in gameplay have appeared as a result) that have taken place, but good thorough player feedback and testing can fix this quickly.
Also the guardian powers are a new addition and are far from finished. The whole 40EP thing is probably intended as you need to be selective with your buildings (although this is hard with the RNG missions and may be made easier with the secret missions)

And currently there is no way to resist acid damage.

[KDR_11k]

I've had concerns about the crafting material availability but I haven't played far enough to do any tier upgrades (just deleted all my worlds and started fresh today) and see how that plays out in practice.

The water protection spell isn't implemented yet AFAIK.

[x4000]

A brief note: we changed like a million things in a very short amount of time.  We're still in the process of trying to change a ton of things, so we're not doing end-to-end testing ourselves yet.  If there are improper circular dependencies and such, that's stuff we absolutely want to know about!

[Martyn van Buren]

Yeah, there are definitely too many of the new towers and things and too few commodities in my world, especially since pretty much all tier two spells require commodities. Is there an explanation somewhere of what the new things are for?

I was holding off on posting this assuming it's something you're aware of and will fix in a few updates, but the last few days the game has seemed unusually beta-ish and hard to play.  Anyway I have faith in the overall plan.

Personally I'd suggest either making commodities a lot more abundant or removing the need for them from a few basic spells.  Also would strongly suggest adding links to the reference section so you can quickly figure out what spells you're close to being able to craft, what else you need, and where you can get it; as it is you have to go in and out of three menus minimum to answer the basic question of 'how do I get a bit more power?'

EDIT: I do want to clarify, it's the macro game that's been giving me trouble.  Combat and such is a big improvement over pre-power coding spree days.

[KDR_11k]

Someone probably needs to draw up a dependency graph, it's pretty hard to keep track of all the secondary and tertiary unlocks needed for spell upgrades to really say what's bad. For an example, Fireball Mk3 requires Magma which requires a stash in a Lava Tower Mk3 which requires Lava Flats which require continent 2.

[BobTheJanitor]

Someone probably needs to draw up a dependency graph, it's pretty hard to keep track of all the secondary and tertiary unlocks needed for spell upgrades to really say what's bad. For an example, Fireball Mk3 requires Magma which requires a stash in a Lava Tower Mk3 which requires Lava Flats which require continent 2.

I think something like this really needs to be in the game. The references need to get a lot more interconnected. I should be able to start from any point in there and be able to click my way through to anything involved. So if I click on crafting materials and select clay I should be able to see any spells that use clay, and they should be clickable, and take me to the reference for that spell, which should show me all the other ingredients, and THEY should also be clickable, taking me to to the reference for that ingredient and telling me how to unlock it if I haven't and where it is found in the world if I have. It's sort of possible to find this information right now, but there is way too much clicking up and down through menus to find it. It seems nothing is linked to anything else.

[Martyn van Buren]

Absolutely. I guess it makes sense for that to wait until crafting is in a finished state --- could Keith or X give us a sense of how much you're still planning to change it? If it's likely to be stable for a while somebody from the community could draw up a pdf chart and post it here. I might be able to later this week, but of course I'd rather not unless it's likely to be valid for a while.

[Dizzard]

To be honest, I haven't really played much of the game lately....even with the latest updates.

Sometimes I'll start playing and then about 10-15 minutes later I exit the game. I don't know I think maybe the flow doesn't feel as good as it was before. :/

Whenever I fail a mission (like a rescue one) I don't have the gusto to try it again. I think for all it's weaknesses the civilization level made me feel like I was getting somewhere whereas now I feel a little aimless. Don't get me wrong I don't always need to be told what to do...but it's still nice to have some obvious overlying task I have to be working towards.

The enemy progress bar doesn't cut it for me because I've turned it off....I don't really like having timers hanging over my head. They just make me feel paranoid about what I'm doing and how I'm doing it and where I'm doing it and why I'm doing it and it doesn't feel fun for me personally. (It's why I wasn't as fond of the original Pikmin game)

[BobTheJanitor]

It does feel a little bit too open right now. The most obvious thing is to go do missions, because they show up right there on the map inviting you to jump right in. But that can be counter productive, since if you just do missions you will push the EP up and eventually lose the continent. (Side note on that, I thought the EP meter was showing me the progress until Tier 2. I was surprised when it suddenly went to T2 when it was only slightly filled. Then I actually moused over it and saw it was a full timer until the overlord wins. Maybe some little marks in there to show when each tier flips over?)

The unlockables list is helpful, although I wish it was a bit more focused. Maybe it shouldn't show T2 or T3 goals until you can actually do them. It might even be nice to have a single suggestion for what to do next to give something to really focus on.

[zebramatt]

I must admit, something about the way the overlord's progress is displayed doesn't sit right with me either.

In AI War, by dint of the fact it's 4X, first you scout thoroughly, then choose your objectives - and all the while, your actions aggravate the AI. It feels right. You're out there in space alone, exploring and exploiting, struggling to stay alive long enough to make a meaningful move against the ever-growing threat.

But in Valley, things are pitched a different way. You discover the world first hand, encountering new things along the way. You complete objectives to make the world more hospitable - building wind shelters, rescuing survivors, fighting monsters - and occasionally obtain new materials which unlock new abilities. And there's an undercurrent of impending doom if you don't find a way to stop the evil overlord for the region before it's too late.

Or, at least, that's how I think it's supposed to feel. In fact, it presently feels like what you're trying to do is bring the continent ever closer to destruction, so that you can leach some of the overlord's growing power to use for your own ends. It actually feels like an inversion of the AI War model in many ways. Whereas there you're beefing yourself up and, in the process, making yourself a bigger target; here you're making yourself a bigger target so that you can unlock the tools to beef yourself up. And in the context of a game of limited knowledge (as opposed to a 4X) what it adds up to - for me - is a feeling of counter-productivity. (Almost the opposite of AI War, where you feel positively compelled to gear up for the final confrontation.)

I'm of a mind that if we need a meter to show what tier we're currently at, it should definitely not be the overlord's progress meter! Simply splitting it into two interlinked stats would go a great way towards alleviating much of the feeling of counter-productivity, I think. Both could then be presented to the user on the mission rewards/consequences screen, with an indication of how much each is affected.

Having two stats - one for the old-style civilisation progress; and one for the overlord's ire - would also allow for more flexibility and obfuscation of the actual numbers. I'm thinking one mission might list a "Major Boost" to civilisation progress and a "Major Aggravation" of overlord ire; whereas another might list a "Minor Boost" to civ progress but a "Medium Aggravation" of ire, if you also got a shiny rare commodity.

Then again, it might just be me that feels this way! 

[x4000]

A few notes:

1. I hear you on the circular dependencies.  In terms of actual crafting mechanics, I can tell you those are final for 1.0.  The balance of them is... not good at the moment, though.

2. In terms of the Enemy Progress, I really don't see us revisiting that or making it more opaque or splitting it.  That bit is meant to very much feel more like a strategy game, but since we're only getting into a lot of the meat of the new strategy game options (most involve guardian powers, only a few of which are even there yet), so that feels less natural of a fit.  But trying to change Enemy Progress just for thematic reasons inevitably means more complexity for the player, less clarity, as well as delays in the project as a whole.

3. Also very much hear you for the need for more direction.  We're working on that, and missions in some respects are also meant to be helping with that.  I think I'm going to extend the concept of the introductory phase beyond the intro mission some, and make the introduction of missions and all that a lot more gradual.

4. And Dizzard, remember that things are still only partly finished in terms of all the base mechanics, and are definitely not balanced yet.  Hopefully by the end of this week all the base mechanics are finished, and by the end of next week they are close to balanced.  Then it's time for beta phase 3.

[Bluddy]

Maybe the EP concept should be flipped. Instead of showing you the time to the continent's destruction, the bar should represent your progress towards saving the continent. The effect would be very similar -- the closer you get to saving the continent, the more the overlord does desperate things, making the enemies stronger etc. But psychologically it's not the same, and your goal would then be to make that bar shorter rather than longer. A side benefit is that if you get to make it short, the enemy has no time to reach a really high tier, which makes sense -- with the EP system, lengthening the maximum of the bar just allows the enemy more time to operate at a higher tier.

[Hyfrydle]

Maybe the EP concept should be flipped. Instead of showing you the time to the continent's destruction, the bar should represent your progress towards saving the continent. The effect would be very similar -- the closer you get to saving the continent, the more the overlord does desperate things, making the enemies stronger etc. But psychologically it's not the same, and your goal would then be to make that bar shorter rather than longer. A side benefit is that if you get to make it short, the enemy has no time to reach a really high tier, which makes sense -- with the EP system, lengthening the maximum of the bar just allows the enemy more time to operate at a higher tier.

I like this idea perhaps the missions reduce the EP instead of increasing it. The problem is what would cause the EP to increase? I guess failing a mission would effect the Overlords plans in some way. Definately food for thought.

[Bluddy]

Maybe the EP concept should be flipped. Instead of showing you the time to the continent's destruction, the bar should represent your progress towards saving the continent. The effect would be very similar -- the closer you get to saving the continent, the more the overlord does desperate things, making the enemies stronger etc. But psychologically it's not the same, and your goal would then be to make that bar shorter rather than longer. A side benefit is that if you get to make it short, the enemy has no time to reach a really high tier, which makes sense -- with the EP system, lengthening the maximum of the bar just allows the enemy more time to operate at a higher tier.

I like this idea perhaps the missions reduce the EP instead of increasing it. The problem is what would cause the EP to increase? I guess failing a mission would effect the Overlords plans in some way. Definately food for thought.

If you're referring to my idea, it wouldn't be an EP bar but an IP (Illari Progress) bar. You fill up the bar doing missions, moving the continent closer to being rescued. In the meantime, the overlord is busy trying to stop you. As you get closer and closer to rescuing the continent, the overlord increases the enemies' level.

In terms of failing missions, I don't think there should be a penalty for that. Within the GTA model the game is in, there needs to be a small benefit to failing missions rather than a really big penalty, to prevent discouraging the player. My idea (on Mantis) is that after generating vengeful ghosts for a while, you start generating good ghosts that help you out against the boss on that mission.