If the game drags at any point, where would those points be?

[LayZboy]

I find the game drags when starting a new continent. It would be kinda fun if when you first when into a town there was an overlord attack on the settlement, and you had to save a many people as possible. Naturally some of them are gonna be KIA, but some might survive or none at all. Obviously this wouldn't be the real overlord, just one of his lower bumbuddies or something.

[LintMan]

I find the game drags when starting a new continent. It would be kinda fun if when you first when into a town there was an overlord attack on the settlement, and you had to save a many people as possible. Naturally some of them are gonna be KIA, but some might survive or none at all. Obviously this wouldn't be the real overlord, just one of his lower bumbuddies or something.

When I first started playing, for some reason I thought there were going to be "defend the settlement" type events - things you'd know were coming and would have to prepare for them in some way.   Fighting off an initial attack upon arrival would be cool, also, and together they'd really give some motivation for getting rid of the Overlord.  I'd definitely love to see that.

[omegajasam]

Honestly, I wouldn't mind if the overlord just showed up at the begining and said mean things about the charcters mother. Anything more then 'His name is in the bad guy slot' would be nice XD

[Varil]

Maybe instead of a fortress, the Overlord could randomly enter different zones, creating a "Battle the Overlord!" mission. Basically, he spends his time rampaging instead of chilling out away from the action. As a mission, you could really spice it up. Maybe even make the fights different depending on which Overlord you're facing(determined at continent gen, probably, to keep weirdness like the Overlord changing between fights if the player dies or flees).

Maybe the godzilla boss could rampage around a large, mostly flat map while meteors(like those from the Defend Supply Depot mission) rain down everywhere. We could have a lava-dragon type boss that you have to fight in an area with very little land and lots of connected lava pools, which the boss swims between to attack you from, occasionally launching the lava in a spray everywhere. Or some really weird stuff, like a flying fortress style robot boss, which could even act as a multi-stage fight. First you have to get into the "overlord"(which is in the sky, and has tons of turret defenses and flying mechanic monsters), then once you're inside you have to navigate to the core, or mother computer, or whatever, and defeat it in a typical "Shoot the core!" style fight.

If the player doesn't do the mission, have something happen in the zone he was in. Maybe it renews the windstorm in that zone, forcing you to deal with it again, with some sort of "repair the wind shelter" mission?

Or what about different windstorms depending on the overlord? Godzilla gets the normal windstorm, lava-dragon gets a fast acting heatwave that does more damage than normal but can be mitigated(but not removed) by a heatsuit, Fortress gets a lightning storm that instead of doing steady damage randomly hits you with lightning for larger chunks of damage, but can sometimes be dodged.

Either way, the point would be to make it at least look like the Overlord is actively causing trouble, rather than just chilling out, enjoying the weather when the glyph bearer busts in Kool-Aid style "YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED, OVERLORD!" with basically no provocation beyond the dude being named "Overlord". And his parents just thought it'd be a cool, intimidating name, you know?

[timtim]

I just wanted to say, I'm not a very good player (around 20 hours in, done lots of exploring and fudging around and only at Tier 3) but I've never really found it grindy.

I've come from Minecraft though, and if there were similar discussion about that then Notch would have been forced to make a 'store' for all the materials because 'mining for materials takes ages and is a grind'.

Some games you have to work for stuff, yes, but that's just the nature of games like this. It's great you introduce stuff to ease it, but don't spoonfeed everything to the lazy ones.

My only gripes about the game are when I get lost and have to attempt to read the map to try and get out, which is tricky - so an improved map system would be nice.

I also don't really like when all the monsters level up with me - I like it on older games, like the Pokemon ones and older Final Fantasys, where you could go back when you're much stronger and battle those wimpy first bosses in the original areas.

A lot of the game is still quite confusing, but that might just be me. It'd be good to be able to 'search' through the encyclopedia in the game as I tried for ages to see if there was something that would help me against the wind / storms - it'd be good to just search 'storm' and it come up quickly.

[TechSY730]

Either way, the point would be to make it at least look like the Overlord is actively causing trouble, rather than just chilling out, enjoying the weather when the glyph bearer busts in Kool-Aid style "YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED, OVERLORD!" with basically no provocation beyond the dude being named "Overlord". And his parents just thought it'd be a cool, intimidating name, you know?

Bursting in Kool-Aid style and giving a corny one-liner seems like reason enough to battle an overlord to me

But I agree that the overlords presence and activity could be made more prevalent somehow.

[KDR_11k]

Maybe this belongs in a different thread, but wow, the combat! We have the difficulty set to "Hero" (the recommended level for "experienced gamers") and it feels like the enemies are massive, brainless chunks of hp that are most dangerous when they accidentally bumble into close proximity to you (because even a ranged enemy seems to typically do 5-10 times as much damage when you run into it as it does with its shots).

We don't even have time to get bored by anything else because we're so busy being bored by the combat. This is just using spells at same tier or one above the enemies, including ones that hit the enemy vulnerability.

If you want to talk about bubble-popping fun, I think multiplying enemy ranged damage by 5, dividing enemy melee damage by 2 and dividing enemy health by 4 would be a good place to start, at least on Hero difficulty.

You talk about "we", how many people are you playing with? Enemy health is scaled to the player count so that may be amplifying the problem.

[Chex Warrior]

A lot of the game is still quite confusing, but that might just be me...

It's not you, I felt the same way when I started, you'll get used to it -especially the maps, once you learn how to read them they become incredibly useful.

[yllamana]

Maybe this belongs in a different thread, but wow, the combat! We have the difficulty set to "Hero" (the recommended level for "experienced gamers") and it feels like the enemies are massive, brainless chunks of hp that are most dangerous when they accidentally bumble into close proximity to you (because even a ranged enemy seems to typically do 5-10 times as much damage when you run into it as it does with its shots).

We don't even have time to get bored by anything else because we're so busy being bored by the combat. This is just using spells at same tier or one above the enemies, including ones that hit the enemy vulnerability.

If you want to talk about bubble-popping fun, I think multiplying enemy ranged damage by 5, dividing enemy melee damage by 2 and dividing enemy health by 4 would be a good place to start, at least on Hero difficulty.

You talk about "we", how many people are you playing with? Enemy health is scaled to the player count so that may be amplifying the problem.

There are just two of us. I think it may have something to do with it, yes. We're not running around on the same map soloing or anything like that, but it's possible it still makes the enemies a lot less fun to fight.

I turned the difficulty down to the default one and the combat is a lot more fun. Basic enemies tend to die in one to two hits, even with both of us in the same area. There's no challenge, but it's heaps more fun than chipping away at huge mountains of hp constantly.

[IIE16 Yoshi]

I now have brown minions running thru my mind going 'FOR DA OVERLORD!'
I'm totally okay with this.

[zebramatt]

I was playing Castlevania the other day and was particularly struck that putting the difficulty up doesn't make enemies any harder to kill (most are one-hit anyway) but just adds a lot frakking more of them.

I think I'd like that solution more in Valley too, up to a point.

[Coppermantis]

The Overlord definitely needs to pose a threat. Something sort of the rampaging monsters in the older betas, but sent by the Overlord. Perhaps on Civilization Tier increase he/she/it sends an attack force to the settlement? The problem with that is that without the strategic turns there's not much of a way to measure time that passes, perhaps it could get a tile closer every time a mission is completed?

[Bluddy]

The Overlord definitely needs to pose a threat. Something sort of the rampaging monsters in the older betas, but sent by the Overlord. Perhaps on Civilization Tier increase he/she/it sends an attack force to the settlement? The problem with that is that without the strategic turns there's not much of a way to measure time that passes, perhaps it could get a tile closer every time a mission is completed?

The idea I had is that missions (actually I envisioned specific time crystals you went and blew up, but even the old time controls from the beta are fine) allow time to flow between time shards. The problem with controlling the movement of stuff tile by tile is that every threat becomes trivial. See a gang of monsters approaching? Go and intercept them. The AI never has a chance to get to you.

However, if you say that time flows within a time shard, then armies can move freely within a time shard. So you don't know where exactly the monsters are. They're somewhere in the time shard, but moving around in real time, so they're really hard to catch. Maybe they were spotted a couple of turns ago, but now who knows where they've gone to?

The key is that they can't transition between time shards. Only glyphbearers can do that, and the Ilari allow specific passageways to open between time shards when you do X. That's when the monster armies can come closer to the settlement.

As further ramifications of this approach, a settler you rescued will not be able to arrive in town until he/she has traversed the time shards necessary to reach the settlement.

[mrhanman]

For me, the only grindy part I've encountered are the Survivor Rescue Missions.  More specifically, it's finding them.  When you can't cast Seek Survivor because you don't have the prerequisite survivor, it can get very boring going from building to building and cave to cave.

It would be nice if the Seek Survivor guardian scroll didn't require a specific job.

[tigersfan]

For me, the only grindy part I've encountered are the Survivor Rescue Missions.  More specifically, it's finding them.  When you can't cast Seek Survivor because you don't have the prerequisite survivor, it can get very boring going from building to building and cave to cave.

It would be nice if the Seek Survivor guardian scroll didn't require a specific job.

Are you still seeing this with the most recent versoins? We made them a lot more common a couple versions ago.