Poll: Make certain monsters use low-calibre attacks

[Aquohn]

Basically, with the calibre change, some attacks which used to be easily swatted aside (such as the mosquito fireball things) are now able to smash through your shots. This totally changes how the monsters feel. So I think some monsters (particularly mosuqitos) should use low-calibre attacks.

Feel free to suggest other monsters that you think should also use low-calibre attacks.

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=10739

[x4000]

Honestly I play a lot of the game (almost every night with my son), and I love how it feels with these monsters.  It would be nerfing the flame mummy into all oblivion to make that sort of change, I think.  Yes it's a very different feel than it was in beta, but that was... why there was a change.

[Aquohn]

Even the mosquitos? In beta it was really like swatting mosquitos: their shots are easy to stop and do little damage, and the knockback was annoying but generally not painful, but they're really hard to hit, and the knockback could prove lethal now and then (analogously, a real mosquito sting can give you malaria).

[x4000]

For me I absolutely adore the mosquito because they give me a certain NES vibe.  I was just playing about 15 minutes ago with my son, and ran through several.  They aren't too hard to dodge most of the time, and the damage they do is tiny.  It's mainly something that messes up your concentration bonuses.

[Aquohn]

Yeah, that too, I guess. Something I realised on my run-through with my brother just minutes ago (he keeps dying to the Chests and the Crocs

[x4000]

Yeah, those are nasty if you're not careful.  My son freaks out over the chests in particular, heh.  He's way too young to play, but just every time he sees them come for me.

[Aquohn]

Hmm, that reminds me: what in the name of the lore is the Mimic Chest supposed to be in the first place?

Edit: Also: "In normal game, you hunt treasure chest. In AVWW2, treasure chest hunt you!"

[Histidine]

If there's an enemy that needs low caliber shots, it's probably Firewalker rather than Flame Mummy.

[Aquohn]

Firewalker shots have LULZ calibre. They can't be hit at all. Period.

[x4000]

The mimic chest is a small creature living in a chest with a hollow bottom. You can see its feet sticking out the bottom.

Regarding the caliber of the fire walkers, that's the idea: it's kind of all or nothing. Either they are a pointless enemy that their shots just die as you spam shoot them, or they are an interesting whirligig of shots that you have to time your shots through. I choose the latter.

I know a lot of this is different from early beta, but I just didn't feel like the other system worked well, aside from being confusing. The shift did make the game harder, yeah, but since when is Arcen known for making easy games?

[LaughingThesaurus]

Valley 1 was pretty easy. I found myself never dying on the second-highest difficulty. Tidalis is pretty easy to not die in, because even if it is turned up to really hard, you can generally at worst live. You can't really make combos if you're bad but it's no Meteos in the 'screwing you over when you make a mistake' front. AI War is really complex, and it is challenging on normal mode, but it allows the difficulty to go as low as basically turning the AI into something as hard as a fluffy bunny.

Valley 2 kinda came out of nowhere for me, because it's one of your games where there isn't really an option to just make the game trivial. I found it just like twice as hard as every other game you guys have actually made. It's muuuuuuch more awesome now rather than alpha on the 'turn the difficulty down and you'll survive' front, but it's still way harder on average than your other games, I find. I can actually die repeatedly on difficulty levels lower than the default normal mode if I make a simple mistake.

[x4000]

...fair points.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Now that doesn't mean your other games don't actually have really high skill ceilings.

[x4000]

Right, that I know for sure! I hadn't thought about the skill floor here as much though.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Well, it's certainly a lot better than it was during alpha. I remember getting one-shotted on below normal difficulty at 3 hearts and various nonsense like that. Bosses were basically impossible to win for me as well. Difficulty feels like it can drop pretty low now. The strategic difficulty definitely doesn't need any lower options. Combat difficulty might? It's hard to say without some people who aren't good at this game playing it and complaining. I really doubt it'd need to go quite as extreme as AI War can either way.