I've never played a game this bad

[mrhanman]

"I've never played a game this bad"

Really? Huhn.  *Returns to happily explore more of Environ*

[chemical_art]

No one says you have to use your upgrade stones when you collect them, or have to collect them at all.  Part of the choice of the game heh   other than that I can't say much more, it depends on what we decide to do with upgrade stones. 

King

True. It's just common practice in 95% of the games one plays that if you have the option to use an upgrade, you do.. And if one thinks a game is hard and gets the option to upgrade, then intuition says "take the upgrade". If after getting said upgrade the player still dies, and is now left slightly weaker and back to square one, but now in a slightly more frustrating situation.

It's frustrating no matter how you cut it.

Sure, it's easy to say "don't take the upgrade" when you don't die on a regular basis. But the whole reason to take the upgrade is to make the game easier.

So the end result is that those who need the upgrade the most are the ones most likely to lose it. That doesn't seem good.

The mechanic reminds me of those top down shooters were one gets powerups. If the play does perfect the game gets easier. But if the player makes a mistake and dies, now the game is much harder to get out of. It's a good mechanic to eat quarters. Not so easy to finish games.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

"I've never played a game this bad"

Really? Huhn.  *Returns to happily explore more of Environ*

Hey, hey, no flaming in this thread.  He has an opinion with reasons behind it, which is good for feedback.

King

[mrhanman]

Flames?  I spewed no fire at anyone.  That was simply my reaction to his post.  He may have made some interesting points in the main body of his post, but the Topic is clearly hyperbole and not suited to a rational discourse, if such a thing exists anymore.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

No one says you have to use your upgrade stones when you collect them, or have to collect them at all.  Part of the choice of the game heh   other than that I can't say much more, it depends on what we decide to do with upgrade stones. 

King

True. It's just common practice in 95% of the games one plays that if you have the option to use an upgrade, you do.. And if one thinks a game is hard and gets the option to upgrade, then intuition says "take the upgrade". If after getting said upgrade the player still dies, and is now left slightly weaker and back to square one, but now in a slightly more frustrating situation.

It's frustrating no matter how you cut it.

Sure, it's easy to say "don't take the upgrade" when you don't die on a regular basis. But the whole reason to take the upgrade is to make the game easier.

So the end result is that those who need the upgrade the most are the ones most likely to lose it. That doesn't seem good.

For this reason, I would suggest making the first buff in a tier stronger, so that

That is the problem in the nutshell and something that was debated pretty heavily during the BETA process.  I think no matter how you slice it, there's going to be some kind of grind when loss is involved. Its making that as painless as possible is the trick. And I don't have a good solution otherwise I'd be in the other thread working on it right now. We shall see what smarter minds come up with . 

King

[chemical_art]

On upgrade stones, their method of acquisition might benefit from a rethinking, it's true. The reason you don't get them from enemies is because the game is designed to avoid the need to grind enemies for upgrades. Of course it's possible that it may have swerved too far in the other direction so that it now requires you to grind exploring buildings for upgrades. Since the original point was to avoid grinding of any type, that could be a problem. Ideally you should just be able to do fun things and advance at a natural rate, and never feel like you MUST do one specific thing repeatedly in order to get further in the game.

From what I understand, it has completely swung in that direction. Want to get building upgrades? Scour areas. Want enchantments? Want upgrade stones? Scour areas. The areas you scour may be different, but the feeling of a grind is all the same. It's grinding, just in a different means.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Flames?  I spewed no fire at anyone.  That was simply my reaction to his post.  He may have made some interesting points in the main body of his post, but the Topic is clearly hyperbole and not suited to a rational discourse, if such a thing exists anymore.

Well, I'm warding it off before other people see the smoke and think there is flames .  While the OP could have worded the topic title better, he's still here discussing so that's something. 

King

[DiscOH]

On dropping gear on death, interestingly that was one of the original designs from waaaaaaaay back in alpha some time. When you died you left a loot bag with all your stuff that you had to go back and get. That idea was dropped because you were just as likely to repeatedly die trying to go back and retrieve it.

As long as the base gear like dash showed up on your replacement body, I don't see a huge problem with this.  I played through the whole game with free tier one spells. Making due with such magic while you trek back to your corpse doesn't seem ridiculous, especially if you could pick up your upgrade stones from the same body.

The reason you don't get them from enemies is because the game is designed to avoid the need to grind enemies for upgrades.

Most of the good leg enchants seem to only show up after you've hunted down X number of various mobs.  How is this any different?

[chemical_art]

That is the problem in the nutshell and something that was debated pretty heavily during the BETA process.  I think no matter how you slice it, there's going to be some kind of grind when loss is involved. Its making that as painless as possible is the trick. And I don't have a good solution otherwise I'd be in the other thread working on it right now. We shall see what smarter minds come up with . 

King

I understand you need a grind, but it feels like a time sink. It sucks at every stage of the game. Early game where dieing is constant, you can't take advantage of those upgrades that could make the game easier. Later on, if you die, you are throwing out magnitudes of more time out of the window. I don't have time for that. So in the end it encourages save scumming.

Also, do you NEED a grind. BobTheJanitor just said the game is meant to discourage grinding, but now it is necessary if you die?

[KingIsaacLinksr]

On dropping gear on death, interestingly that was one of the original designs from waaaaaaaay back in alpha some time. When you died you left a loot bag with all your stuff that you had to go back and get. That idea was dropped because you were just as likely to repeatedly die trying to go back and retrieve it.

As long as the base gear like dash showed up on your replacement body, I don't see a huge problem with this.  I played through the whole game with free tier one spells. Making due with such magic while you trek back to your corpse doesn't seem ridiculous, especially if you could pick up your upgrade stones from the same body.

What if you died in the boss room?  That's where this becomes a problem having all your gear stuck in there and you completely unupgraded.  Its why the mechanic was dropped. 

The reason you don't get them from enemies is because the game is designed to avoid the need to grind enemies for upgrades.

Most of the good leg enchants seem to only show up after you've hunted down X number of various mobs.  How is this any different?
[/quote]

Leg enchants drop from containers, not mobs.

King

[chemical_art]

On dropping gear on death, interestingly that was one of the original designs from waaaaaaaay back in alpha some time. When you died you left a loot bag with all your stuff that you had to go back and get. That idea was dropped because you were just as likely to repeatedly die trying to go back and retrieve it.

As long as the base gear like dash showed up on your replacement body, I don't see a huge problem with this.  I played through the whole game with free tier one spells. Making due with such magic while you trek back to your corpse doesn't seem ridiculous, especially if you could pick up your upgrade stones from the same body.

Somehow it seems less frustrating to die multiple times for the reward of going back to full strength then the current situation of dying and having no avenue to return to full strength.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Also, do you NEED a grind. BobTheJanitor just said the game is meant to discourage grinding, but now it is necessary if you die?

I didn't say you need the grind, I'm just saying that it happens seemingly regardless of what was tried to fix it. 

King

[Toll]

On dropping gear on death, interestingly that was one of the original designs from waaaaaaaay back in alpha some time. When you died you left a loot bag with all your stuff that you had to go back and get. That idea was dropped because you were just as likely to repeatedly die trying to go back and retrieve it.

As long as the base gear like dash showed up on your replacement body, I don't see a huge problem with this.  I played through the whole game with free tier one spells. Making due with such magic while you trek back to your corpse doesn't seem ridiculous, especially if you could pick up your upgrade stones from the same body.

What if you died in the boss room?  That's where this becomes a problem having all your gear stuck in there and you completely unupgraded.  Its why the mechanic was dropped. 

The reason you don't get them from enemies is because the game is designed to avoid the need to grind enemies for upgrades.

Most of the good leg enchants seem to only show up after you've hunted down X number of various mobs.  How is this any different?

Leg enchants drop from containers, not mobs.

King

You need to kill 40 lightning espers to spawn doublejump, though, and five Utah-raptors to spawn triplejump. I assume that's what he referred to. It's not really a whole lot of them though; that should come from normal play before too long (at least the lightning espers).

[Professor Paul1290]

I found ~5-10 stones per 15 minutes in a house, this means that a 16 stone upgrade took on average half an hour to earn.

If you are taking half an hour to get 16 stones then I don't think you're exploring "effectively".

If you're looking for upgrade stones, you should only be looking for stash rooms (which you probably already are) and you should be looking at buildings where you are likely to have a good concentration of stash rooms and skip minor buildings and large ruins. You should also be looking at areas that would have good concentrations of said buildings.
There are other reasons you might want to actually go into the minor or large ruins and enter rooms other than stash rooms of course, but you don't need to for stash supplies like upgrade stones.

In fact, unless you are desparate I don't think you should be going on trips exclusively to get upgrade stones and other stash supplies. These should targets of opportunity you should be picking on your way to more important things, like secret missions, rare spell materials, and other important items. You shouldn't be going out exclusively to get these things.

none of the monsters in this game required any sort of thought or reflexes to avoid.

Your difficulty is probably too low in that case. You should either increase difficulty or in your case it might be better to start a new world using an "expert start" so that you start on the second continent with more content unlocked so you have more enemy types to fight.

The fact that you mentioned that the game is too slow to introduce new content also says you may be better off with an "expert start". That actually bypasses that problem, as you start with more content unlocked.

none of the monsters in this game required any sort of thought or reflexes to avoid.  Platforms were way to abusive and cheap in AVWW, in terraria they weren't handed away for free whenever you healed, and monsters would occasionally destroy them.  Terraria was also more enjoyable for me because you were one of the least mobile entities of that game as apposed to one of the most mobile in AVWW.

You're supposed to have lots of platforms. If you're getting them handed to you whenever you heal, then that also tells me you're not exploring effectively, because if you did you'd be getting more platforms than you would ever need in the process of getting your upgrade stones. (see above)

Platforms are in fact the slowest and least effective way to get somewhere. There are a variety of spells that you can get which will reduce the need for platforms.

You are very mobile in the game, but you're supposed to be very mobile in the game. Most enemies in the game shoot projectiles, and later on they shoot lots of projectiles. The esper balls you've probably already run into eventually start shooting multiple projectiles at once and much more rapidly later on.
It seems like excessive mobility now, but you'll need that crazy mobility later on to avoid getting hit.

[keith.lamothe]

To the OP: welcome to the forums   Community feedback is very welcome.  Indeed, it's a huge part of what got the game to this stage, and AI War to where it is.  So stick with it, and if you don't mind try to attack with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer (frankly the thread title... I mean, how would you feel if someone wrote that about a game you made?  But we can get past that). 

I need to run shortly but it sounds like some progress is being made in identifying areas for improvement and how to do that; hopefully also some info that can help you enjoy the game more (I'm not saying it's perfect, but a lot of people love this game a _lot_, effusively so, so I figure you're probably missing something somewhere).