Author Topic: Initial Opinions  (Read 1826 times)

Offline Terraziel

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Initial Opinions
« on: September 28, 2011, 07:14:46 am »
As a base line I shall say that I have been enjoying the game, and indeed spent much of yesterday playing it. Once it has some flesh on it's bones I sense being addicted to it, frankly it reminds me of ActRaiser and that is not a bad thing.

I have a couple of  specific complaints,

1) The camera should endeavour to keep your target on screen, it's irritating to be fighting a boss that you can't see just because you are walking away from it. This also extend to amoeba bosses, which are almost always off screen.

2) The level map (the top left corner one) can be stupidly large, I have had a few that covered 25% of the screen , when zoomed in they covered a good 45%, at very least they need transparency, as do most of the other UI elements actually, I have had occasion were all have got in the way.

That said here are my initial general criticisms though I shall try and avoid things attributable to being a beta (balance, lack of variation etc).

First is combat, or I suppose "Monster Interaction" as the game seems unsure how it wants to approach it, i note that this is about non-boss combat

The fact that many, if not the majority, of spells are combat related seems to imply that combat should be a major part of the game, as does both the quantity and existence of monster spawners (monster spawners generally being a mechanic to ensure you always have something to fight\have to fight something).
But on the other hand, there are no rewards for fighting any given enemy and with mana being a limited resource (consumables aside) the options are essentially

A) Kill monster, gain nothing, lose ammo and time
B) Jump over monster, gain nothing, lose nothing

Now as a general point I am fine with not gaining exp from non-boss enemies that would make it too easy to grind levels, but I would recommend that monsters become a source of resources. It's that or make mana regen so that shooting them doesn't feel like a waste of ammo.

My second criticism is with adventure level generation.

My personal feeling is that the levels are too big, and contain too many buildings, which are also too big.

Rather the level generator doesn't seem to take into account that there are a lot of levels to visit, I do not need 8 buildings in every screen for 4 screens, there are hundreds of levels, and I will probably visit a tiny fraction of them at best the way it stands, give me smaller levels and better variation, so that it feel less like drudgery walking through them.

The average level should be 1-2 screens tops, the longer ones should be reserved for being actually representative of something (major towns, forests, etc), the normal level should be empty, for want of a better word, with a chance of having a couple of small buildings (hamlets), or caves. Obviously chance exists so that sometimes an otherwise innocuous single screen could contain a link to a giant dungeon, I wish to the game to be more digestible not more repetitive.

What I wish to avoid is the sense, that I get at the moment, of your lone tiny settlement being inexplicably surrounded by towns.

hmm, I think that is probably enough ranting for now, I have some suggestions for settlement building as well, but will let it get fleshed out a bit more before levelling judgement.

Now back to playing

Offline Misery

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Re: Initial Opinions
« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2011, 07:26:02 am »
Ooh, I definitely second the bit with the camera.   The targeting system is very useful indeed, but having a boss be just offscreen is often not a good thing.  It would also be nice to be able to select targets that arent necessarily onscreen yet;  I use a controller for this, so it's hard to just aim at something a bit offscreen, like an approaching shadow bat;  I have to wait for the thing to get onscreen and THEN target.

Monsters, I think it's just a matter of playstyle, and situation.  I've found plenty of situations where I really need to actually kill something that's nearby and hassling me.  But I do think that NOT getting things/exp from monsters is a good thing;  I loathe grinding and consider it to be a design fault in any game it appears in, so it's very refreshing that this one does not seem to have it anywhere.   Making bosses and other events be the sole source of exp was a great idea, I think!

The huge levels...  it really helps if you DONT try to explore every little bit of every area.  I was doing that at first, and... yeah.   All it does is waste time.   If I am, say, in an underground cavern seeking some gems, I'm usually not going to fully explore most areas;  I'm going to plow through, from one door to the next, scouting more and more of the dungeon map until I find one of the yellow gem rooms.   Most normal rooms I'll ignore unless I see a good reason to do otherwise.  It's all in the decision-making;  is such-and-such room/area WORTH exploring right now, or should you just move on?   I kinda like that aspect.

Offline x4000

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Re: Initial Opinions
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2011, 08:54:19 am »
Couple of notes:

1. You can scale down the minimap in the settings if it's too large on your screen.

2. Light drops from monsters are already planned and coming.

3. The camera moving to keep your target on screen is potentially possible, but I see a lot of issues with it.  It could make an interesting mantis suggestion.

4. In terms of the levels being large and having lots of buildings: this is the way we're going on purpose.  But, we aren't done yet, is what you have to remember.  The goal is to have a big believable world where you can explore anywhere you feel like, but not where you have to explore everything.  If you're going to 100% exploration on every building, you're going to burn out fast because the world is infinitely big and you could do that for a really long time. ;)

Glad you're enjoying it!
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Offline GabrielKronos

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Re: Initial Opinions
« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2011, 09:13:59 am »
As for the exploration part, like Chris said, I might be tired of the game by now if I went in the see everything path, but I rather focus my exploration looking for important stuff, like the profession books (took quite a while to find one, and it seems it's very hard to find one in a study room, though it says it's an ok place - this counts even for regions with a higher lvl than mine). I agree that this makes the game large, but mostly unexplored, but hey, as a teacher I had said: "Better sin for the excess, than sin for the fault."

And about the camera, I'll see if nobody added this to Mantis, but I have a suggestion: make the main camera (the screen itself) have varied zoom levels, as for myself, I wanted to have more things on my screen, and I feel the camera too zoomed in my character.

Offline x4000

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Re: Initial Opinions
« Reply #4 on: September 28, 2011, 09:14:55 am »
Zoom levels would be technically infeasible, unfortunately.  The performance impact of all the scaling would negate any benefit.
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Offline BobTheJanitor

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Re: Initial Opinions
« Reply #5 on: September 28, 2011, 10:58:22 am »
Also on exploration, remember that you can see whether a building is worthwhile or not usually just by popping in for two seconds. Just look at the scouted part of the building map. If all the rooms are grey or blue, just leave and run to the next one. You only really need to poke around in buildings with books or caves with gems or when chasing bosses. For minor pickups like potions and such, just get those in the buildings that you need to go through anyway. Exploring otherwise empty buildings for them could potentially waste as many resources as you might pick up.

Offline Terraziel

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Re: Initial Opinions
« Reply #6 on: September 28, 2011, 01:01:18 pm »
Also on exploration, remember that you can see whether a building is worthwhile or not usually just by popping in for two seconds. Just look at the scouted part of the building map. If all the rooms are grey or blue, just leave and run to the next one. You only really need to poke around in buildings with books or caves with gems or when chasing bosses. For minor pickups like potions and such, just get those in the buildings that you need to go through anyway. Exploring otherwise empty buildings for them could potentially waste as many resources as you might pick up.

See I play pretty much exactly like this post suggests, which is frankly a core part of my complaint, if my sole experience of building A is opening the door, instantly discovering the building qualitatively empty, then what is the point of building A, other than taking up space. Now obviously I'm not trying to suggest that every building should have something in it, simply that we don't require quite so many empty ones, especially in the myriad.... non-urban zones.

Offline tigersfan

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Re: Initial Opinions
« Reply #7 on: September 28, 2011, 01:18:50 pm »
As beta continues to progress, we'll be adding more things in the buildings both to see and loot.

Offline BobTheJanitor

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Re: Initial Opinions
« Reply #8 on: September 28, 2011, 01:55:41 pm »
I think there might be room for some sort of expansion on the scouting system once the number of items to pick up gets more fleshed out. A spell to change what you're searching for, a way to expand your scouting radius, etc. So if I only want dust right now, I cast my detect dust spell, and only those rooms show up. Maybe even something on the note on the door of a building as I pass it by. Hmm... might be something to put on mantis after thinking through it a bit more, although maybe I should wait and see how the game evolves going forward before I waste time trying to out-think the development process.

Offline zebramatt

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Re: Initial Opinions
« Reply #9 on: September 28, 2011, 04:24:15 pm »
1. You can scale down the minimap in the settings if it's too large on your screen.

I promise I'm going to muck back into Mantis soon, so a few suggestions knocking around my noggin might actually make their way there (and I realise my hypocrisy there, for anyone paying attention to my attitude towards the sorts of people who're eager to see things implemented but refuse to log them properly).

However, that said, it occurs to me that it might be useful in addition to the existing minimap scale setting to have three levels of zoom - one little one to tuck it out the way when it's becoming enormous; one middling for most of the time; and one great big one for when you just want a jolly good look.

Personally, I've had to set my scale way down to combat it taking up a quarter of the screen but then it spends most of the time being too small to make anything out on and my only option is to blow it up HUMUNGOUS.