Author Topic: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?  (Read 13064 times)

Offline Jayne_Cobb

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #30 on: May 10, 2012, 04:39:57 am »
I will second the thoughts about the Resuce Survivor missions. I have been stuck for days.
Real life days. On continent two, not being able to cast Seek Survivor, or build Wind Shelters.
After killing my character for the random chance of getting an Apoth, I'm stuck with the
Seek Survivor scrolls only bringing up profession I don't need.

The new changes for enchantments seem to change mana requirement reduction to a regeneration bonus.
The effect of this is, that next to not being able to advance on the continent, even with ten upgrades
on mana, I can get no villager to reach 400 mana. So no creeping death any more.
It's reaching the point where I feel the game is more wasting my time, than being
enjoyable. I still like it, but I'm afraid I will not be able to continue playing it.

Offline Misery

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #31 on: May 10, 2012, 05:03:16 am »
I will second the thoughts about the Resuce Survivor missions. I have been stuck for days.
Real life days. On continent two, not being able to cast Seek Survivor, or build Wind Shelters.
After killing my character for the random chance of getting an Apoth, I'm stuck with the
Seek Survivor scrolls only bringing up profession I don't need.

The new changes for enchantments seem to change mana requirement reduction to a regeneration bonus.
The effect of this is, that next to not being able to advance on the continent, even with ten upgrades
on mana, I can get no villager to reach 400 mana. So no creeping death any more.
It's reaching the point where I feel the game is more wasting my time, than being
enjoyable. I still like it, but I'm afraid I will not be able to continue playing it.

Yes, they do need to do something about those mana costs now.   Some of them are WAY too high to be anywhere near practical.

At the same time though, it shouldnt be THAT hard to get a character to 400.... need one from the new-character thing that has around 300 at start, should make it easy.   That's what I did anyway.   Getting them to the rather silly costs to use things like Sun/Moonrise though (what are those.... 480?) isnt happening.  And I dont think Creeping Death is quite good enough to be worth the 400 cost;  it would need to do yet more damage first.

Anyway, I'm sure they're well aware of the thing with the early survivors on new continents, so I doubt that problem will be there for long. 

Dont forget to check that the character you're USING isnt the one you need (need the Aqua guy, I take it, I believe that's the one that allows wind shelters and buoys).   I've had THAT idiotic mistake a few times.

Offline zebramatt

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #32 on: May 10, 2012, 08:18:07 am »
This might be relevant to the enchant discussion (or it might not!):

Enchants - implement player options

Offline Bluddy

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #33 on: May 10, 2012, 09:56:01 am »
Every game has repetitive elements (no game can focus on doing more than a few things well). The point that it becomes grind is that you start noticing that you're doing those repetitive elements rather than being distracted by other things like new experiences or new situations.

You could say that the whole tier system is grindy. Why do I have to reach tier 5? It's arbitrary. It could have easily been 3 or 10 tiers as well. And why can I only research spells one tier up? It's also arbitrarily caused by the fact that missions only give rewards one tier higher. It's not properly explained by the game, making it appear grindy. This is one advantage of the XP/level system: even though it's equally arbitrary that I can only learn spells of a certain level, it's a convention in fantasy games, so it makes more sense to the player, and therefore encounters less resistance.

Another issue (that has been mentioned by others) is that upgrading spells, while fun, gives you very little reward. Spell tiers are too similar, and they're too predictable. After upgrading spells, I'm not even entirely sure which spells WERE upgraded. I have to check to remind myself that 'oh yeah, fireball's now tier 3'. I think that especially if you're going for a system with a ton of spells, you really want to go in the direction where spells are randomly shuffled per continent. Fireball could be in tier 1 and tier 4 for example. But between those tiers, it's randomly not available, so you have to research something different and interesting. Researching the same spell over and over is boring and grindy.

But the issue that I believe has the most potential for improvement is missions. You're forced to repeat missions over and over. That's not a problem in itself. The problem is that the discrete nature of missions makes them stand out as grind. Imagine that you were playing Diablo, but there were no weapons whatsoever. The only way to get weapons is to undertake special missions, that put you into a completely different 3-level dungeon where you have to kill 3 bosses. Once you kill those bosses you get a weapon, and are put back into the dungeon you were in before. It's jarring, and you'd immediately feel the grind.

It's also a waste of resources: you're crafting all these unique, interesting situations. Why not make them a part of the world? Quests have a huge advantage over missions in that they are things that get you to do what the game does anyway, but to do a couple of interesting things along the way. This is how it would work: the world would be seeded with what are currently the missions. So one chunk would be a battleground between two forces. At any point you could choose to join in and destroy the bad guys, completing that quest along the way. You'd have a boss tower with some kind of anti-map magic, where a boss resides. Rather than forcing the player to do a stealth assassination, you could have a quest available to kill the boss. You could go in with guns blazing and face higher tier monsters, or choose instead to use a stealth enchant. In other words, you build the mission scenarios into the world, and create quests that match those scenarios. Another example: going through caves, you'd encounter an umbra vortex cave. You could just try to go through to the next cave, causing the bosses to reset, or you could stay and fight the bosses. Some caves and buildings could also be locked, so that only taking on specific quests unlocks them. These would be only for specific scenarios that would be to complex to build into the world itself.

In other words, rather than making all these scenarios, build up the world so it's more interesting at the same time, and craft the quests around that world, making the feeling organic. As to how to give rewards for the quests, that's something that has to be thought through. Perhaps you could have a quest selection board back in town. You can go out in the world and solve as many quests as you want, but to collect rewards for quests from the Ilari, you have to choose which quests you want to 'turn in', and the Ilari will only give you certain rewards for certain quest types. You could also either go out and randomly solve stuff, coming to collect the rewards later, or you could assign yourself a list of quests and go seek them out.

It would be really nice if there was some big reason for going up in tier, again, to make the tier progress feel natural (this was also suggested above). So each tier would have a 'grand quest' to lead up to. After turning in X quests, you'd have to take on the next big quest. These could range from defeating a boss or a lieutenant to building some defensive structure. They could take the form of several small quests, each looking for a smaller piece of something bigger to build. They could be strategic things that weaken the overlord. Only at the end of tier 5 would your quest be to defeat the overlord, and even that should have variety so that not every overlord is just a big boss fight. Sometimes an overlord could run away to join the next continent's overlord. Sometimes he could be in hiding. A lot of variety is needed here to prevent every overlord from being the same.

Offline Chex Warrior

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #34 on: May 10, 2012, 10:12:11 am »
Quote
I also miss things like how mobs of enemies used to threaten my settlement.

That sounds like a lot of fun.
Making the world more dynamic in terms of the Overlord actively trying to destroy your settlement would lend a real sense of urgency to the game, and IMO make it much more fun.  Plus if somehow your townspeople could use their powers to help foil the Overlord and his underlings they would become much more important and saving them would be even more rewarding.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2012, 10:26:25 am by Chex Warrior »

Offline Hyfrydle

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #35 on: May 10, 2012, 10:27:29 am »
Quote
I also miss things like how mobs of enemies used to threaten my settlement.

That sounds like a lot of fun.

I'm not sure I would call it fun it also applied to the vengeful ghosts left behind when you died. At one point in early beta I had a settlement wiped out by five of my own vengeful ghosts not good.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #36 on: May 10, 2012, 10:32:06 am »
At one point in early beta I had a settlement wiped out by five of my own vengeful ghosts not good.
I thought it was hilarious :)
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Offline TechSY730

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #37 on: May 10, 2012, 10:37:18 am »
At one point in early beta I had a settlement wiped out by five of my own vengeful ghosts not good.
I thought it was hilarious :)

Keep in mind, this guy finds armadas of very intelligent hybrids curb stomping everything and a giant mega-ship that is 3 times more durable then anything else in the game being sprung on ambitious players without warning hilarious.

Offline tigersfan

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #38 on: May 10, 2012, 10:40:07 am »
At one point in early beta I had a settlement wiped out by five of my own vengeful ghosts not good.
I thought it was hilarious :)

Keep in mind, this guy finds armadas of very intelligent hybrids curb stomping everything and a giant mega-ship that is 3 times more durable then anything else in the game being sprung on ambitious players without warning hilarious.

Yeah. So? :)

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #39 on: May 10, 2012, 10:47:28 am »
Keep in mind, this guy finds armadas of very intelligent hybrids curb stomping everything and a giant mega-ship that is 3 times more durable then anything else in the game being sprung on ambitious players without warning hilarious.
(Prints this out and puts it on his refrigerator... well, not really, but close)

:D
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Offline Chex Warrior

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #40 on: May 10, 2012, 10:50:16 am »
Quote
At one point in early beta I had a settlement wiped out by five of my own vengeful ghosts not good.

Haha, I'm used to games in the roguelike tradition, so I think horribly desperate battles are fun!

Offline madcow

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #41 on: May 10, 2012, 11:20:56 am »
If the tier system itself feels grindy, what about changing it so that instead of leveling up continents to upgrade the whole continent's tier, they're fixed so that X squares away from the settlement on the continent map they go up in tier.

I like the idea of doing missions causing bad things to happen though, so maybe every mission that's completed causes the Overlord to build up an army that he'll eventually send after the settlement which you'll have to defend. (okay this is very much an AI war concept, but its a good one!)

Offline nanostrike

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #42 on: May 10, 2012, 12:26:50 pm »
Yes, they do need to do something about those mana costs now.   Some of them are WAY too high to be anywhere near practical.

At the same time though, it shouldnt be THAT hard to get a character to 400.... need one from the new-character thing that has around 300 at start, should make it easy.   That's what I did anyway.   Getting them to the rather silly costs to use things like Sun/Moonrise though (what are those.... 480?) isnt happening.  And I dont think Creeping Death is quite good enough to be worth the 400 cost;  it would need to do yet more damage first.

Worse yet, the higher Mana Costs spells have, the more it really shoehorns players into using Time of Magic characters above the other ones.  In fact, higher costs actively cripple Robots and Medieval characters.

Offline The Wuggly Ump

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #43 on: May 10, 2012, 01:10:39 pm »
I'm sick of grinding to get the spells I like every time I start a new continent. Let me keep some (or all!) of them, please. Especially double jump.

Actually, here's a crazy idea: let me pick which spells to keep when I move to a new continent. More choice is alway nice.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2012, 01:17:29 pm by The Wuggly Ump »

Offline kuliksco

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Re: If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?
« Reply #44 on: May 10, 2012, 01:56:02 pm »
I'm sick of grinding to get the spells I like every time I start a new continent. Let me keep some (or all!) of them, please. Especially double jump.

Actually, here's a crazy idea: let me pick which spells to keep when I move to a new continent. More choice is alway nice.

I don't think this is a good idea because people will keep using the same spells.  One of the great things about the game is there are like 50+ spells.  I think there should be some kind of mechanics that forces people to use different spells, possibly only make some of them available on specific continents.  It doesn't help either that once you get a good right arm enchant for 60%+ dmg you tend to keep using that element.

 

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