Valley 2 Beta .708 "Aggressive Angles" Released!

[ShaggyMoose]

I like the feature where you are warped out of caves directly after picking up the loot rather than having to climb out...

Is it possible to accidentally warp out before you pick up the loot though?

Never mind. I noticed that the info pop-up on these doors specifically tell you that they are going back to the world map. Fairly warned be thee, says I!

[primordialthought]

This is an.. interesting decision. I haven't played Valley 2 in a while, and I've got a bunch of work so it'll probably be a while until I do again, but I'm a little cautious.

I found myself using the angled shots quite a lot. A lot of the terrain in angled, and more importantly a lot of the enemies (bats bats bats) will come at you from an angle where you can't hit them in a straight line, and sometimes it seems even anged shots go over them. Unless everything now moves in a very robotic up and to the side motion this is going to cause major problems I think, because there's not always a lot of room in caves for maneuvering.

[Panopticon]

Yep. Spelunking for Perk Tokens is the deadliest activity in the game for me now. If I don't have Illuminologist or one of the classes with a decent seeking spell they can get very tricky indeed. Luckily in my current game I have Illuminologist.

[Misery]

Yep. Spelunking for Perk Tokens is the deadliest activity in the game for me now. If I don't have Illuminologist or one of the classes with a decent seeking spell they can get very tricky indeed. Luckily in my current game I have Illuminologist.

Yeah, pretty much.


Right now, many classes seem more balanced towards outdoor areas.... which is a problem when there are more cavern/indoor areas than outdoor ones.   

Though, even outdoors, the classes that currently are effective indoors are STILL better right now.

[primordialthought]

I'd say it would actually be much better with the 'finger ballet'.

I agree that a lot of it does feel like finger ballet, it's by no means perfect, but I also think that there's going to be nothing good coming out of restricting the ways you can shoot to this extent. If you're going to insist on non-mouse driven aiming it's alsways going to be a little janky, but I think it'd be much better with the jank and directional aiming than with the most basic of basic four directional aiming. People will either use the angular shots or they wont, it should be there as an option, especially with how the game works and is laid out.

The finger ballet isn't perfect, but it's better than "You can only aim in four directions." That's actually pretty bad.

[Mick]

The finger ballet isn't perfect, but it's better than "You can only aim in four directions." That's actually pretty bad.

I just don't agree with this. In another thread, someone pointed out a nice list of games that don't have diagonal aiming that do just fine with them. In fact, diagonal aiming (and sometimes even vertical aiming) in a side scrolling game is more than exception than the rule. Megaman, Cave Story, Mario... I could keep going on.

[LaughingThesaurus]

The difference is, those game are explicitly designed for it. You have four degrees of aiming, the enemies have three-hundred and sixty, and the environs (hehe) were designed for diagonal shots. That puts the enemies at a significant advantage. Much more significant than ever, in fact. Honestly, if the game's 100% focused either way, there really is no problem. It would probably work out in that case. It's just, we're looking at beta right now.

[Misery]

The difference is, those game are explicitly designed for it. You have four degrees of aiming, the enemies have three-hundred and sixty, and the environs (hehe) were designed for diagonal shots. That puts the enemies at a significant advantage. Much more significant than ever, in fact. Honestly, if the game's 100% focused either way, there really is no problem. It would probably work out in that case. It's just, we're looking at beta right now.

Actually, in games that use 4-way aiming, well, I dont think I've ever seen enemy projectiles JUST restricted to the same 4 ways.  There are still many enemies in that sort of game that will aim directly at you, and such.   Usually, enemies that JUST aim in one direction dont even aim at all and have zero AI, and super-exploitable patterns, making them very easy to an experienced player.... Megaman is a good example of this.  The only thing that keeps the Megaman games somewhat challenging isnt the enemy design, but the levels themselves.  Enemies with easily exploited patterns (AKA, all of them in that series) become challenging purely because of the rooms they are in.   In a randomly generated game like this one, you cannot completely rely on that to create the challenge, and I dont think having easily exploited patterns is a good idea for THIS game anyway.  It works for Megaman.... but Megaman is also a very simple game, and very short.  This one is neither.

[Teal_Blue]

Just my quick two cents,  but i agree and second the motion to make angled shots 'optional'
I really used them alot and miss them, and well... if it isn't breaking anyone's heart to have the options, the people that don't like it can do the 4-way thing and love it,  and i can do the 'finger ballet' angled thing and love that too!   

Just my vote!

[Mick]

Just my quick two cents,  but i agree and second the motion to make angled shots 'optional'
I really used them alot and miss them, and well... if it isn't breaking anyone's heart to have the options, the people that don't like it can do the 4-way thing and love it,  and i can do the 'finger ballet' angled thing and love that too!   

Just my vote!

Then which mode do they balance around?

[chemical_art]

Then which mode do they balance around?

Considering some slices were made explicitly for it (diagonal shots), it is hard to say at this time.

[tigersfan]

Just my quick two cents,  but i agree and second the motion to make angled shots 'optional'
I really used them alot and miss them, and well... if it isn't breaking anyone's heart to have the options, the people that don't like it can do the 4-way thing and love it,  and i can do the 'finger ballet' angled thing and love that too!   

Just my vote!

Then which mode do they balance around?

This is why there's no way we could really make it optional. This runs us into the same problem as mouse aiming, there's no way to properly balance around both. So we can really only have on or the other.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Once the game is properly balanced around the four way aiming, I'll absolutely update and play it a bunch more. I'm just waiting for all the kinks to be worked out in that.
@Misery: Going back to the cave story example, many enemies have mass projectile spam that can go in any direction. The trick is, there, you can actually fire through their shots and destroy their shots, and your weapons were actually massively overpowered to make up for your low health and limited aiming (well, until you got hit, but that's a different problem). Another part of my concern is the idea that enemies can cover four angles, and are suddenly untouchable for many of the mage classes. You can get around that with diagonal shots. Yeah, some enemies in Megaman and Cave story had those invulnerable projectiles. You know what else they had? An extremely slow rate of fire and a very particular pattern.

[madcow]

I think the issue with 4 way aiming is not just enemy design. It is slice design.  If you look at the classic metroidvania type games angled terrain is fairly rare. The angled terrain that does exist tends to be stairs that you can shoot through.  I think a lot of the current slices need to be redone so that the levels do not have as much incline to them.  Alternatively. If you're standing on angled ground you should automatically angle shots up/down the slopes.

Edit:  I'm not saying remove all angled terrain, but it needs to be toned down.  Or additional platforms added over those slopes might work

[Misery]

Once the game is properly balanced around the four way aiming, I'll absolutely update and play it a bunch more. I'm just waiting for all the kinks to be worked out in that.
@Misery: Going back to the cave story example, many enemies have mass projectile spam that can go in any direction. The trick is, there, you can actually fire through their shots and destroy their shots, and your weapons were actually massively overpowered to make up for your low health and limited aiming (well, until you got hit, but that's a different problem). Another part of my concern is the idea that enemies can cover four angles, and are suddenly untouchable for many of the mage classes. You can get around that with diagonal shots. Yeah, some enemies in Megaman and Cave story had those invulnerable projectiles. You know what else they had? An extremely slow rate of fire and a very particular pattern.

Yeah, which is pretty much what I was saying.   I dont think enemies in either of those games are good inspirations for enemies in THIS one, unless the devs want the game to become very, very easy.   Cave Story is an easy game by default, and Megaman's enemies are utterly braindead and are usually only dangerous because of the surrounding terrain.   And yeah, SOME sort of way of firing in more than 4 directions is going to be necessary for the player.  Is why right now, any mage class with too many straight shot spells is going to be pretty useless..... though, so far, I'm finding straight-shot spells themselves nearly useless.