Valley 2 Beta .717 "Strategory 64" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

3) I haven't finished more than a couple turns yet, but there are a couple of things that concern me.  I don't think that this patch addresses the issue that a lot of new players are having which is "The Overlord came out and wrecked my farm and clinic on his first 2 turns, and now I'm screwed."

Even in previous versions in my playtests there was always some other farmland or ocean-shallows-buildings tile I could use for farming purposes either before or shortly after the overlord burned the first farm.

Also, now infighting only does damage rather than the less-granular wound/kill of before.  My guess is that you can last quite a while at low morale whereas before you'd take casualties left and right.

From what it sounds like, lower difficulties will actually be harder now early game because he will be moving 3 squares per turn rather than 2 at the start, plus you now have to deal with monsters (this could be wrong though).

The 3-moves thing does make him somewhat harder compared to the very early game before, but your NPCs having power instead of wound/kill and the flexibility of the different classes makes the game substantially easier, more than counterbalancing the overlord's early game 3-moves.

The monsters (and other upcoming overlord spells) may counterbalance that, but that's basically the point of those.  If the overall result is too easy or too hard we'll rebalance as necessary.

Also, it seems that there could be a situation where it's always best to just attack monsters ASAP (kind of defeating the purpose of adding them).

How does that defeat the purpose of adding them?  A few things to remember:

- If the overlord targets his tile with the summon, then on your first turn seeing the monsters they'll all be right next to the overlord.  Any NPC you send after the monsters on that turn will basically be guaranteed to die when the overlord moves next.

- Sure, you can have NPCs covering the area to kill the monsters as soon as they're outside the overlord's range, but the actual positioning to make that feasible and the use of the NPC time (and power) to accomplish that is highly non-trivial.  Even if the summoned monsters never kill an NPC or destroy a tile in your game they've still served a substantial purpose as a constraint you've had to deal with.


Anyway, thanks for the feedback, I'm just not sure we're talking about the same thing yet

[Billick]

The class/power mechanics aren't really explained at all.  I see that the different classes have different icons, but nothing shows what that means or why it's important.

While in the game:

1) Press Escape
2) Click "Help" (it's the top button on the escape menu)
3) Click "Strategy Game Tips"
4) The topics "Know Your Allies: Power" and "Know Your Allies: Classes" provide fairly detailed descriptions of those mechanics.

Where else does it need to tell you these things?



Thanks

Ah cool, I missed that!  It might still be worth it to have a quick summary of what the character's stats are when you select a tile with somebody on it (sort of what I outlined above), and then have greater detail in the help section like you have it now. 

Even in previous versions in my playtests there was always some other farmland or ocean-shallows-buildings tile I could use for farming purposes either before or shortly after the overlord burned the first farm.

Also, now infighting only does damage rather than the less-granular wound/kill of before.  My guess is that you can last quite a while at low morale whereas before you'd take casualties left and right.

The 3-moves thing does make him somewhat harder compared to the very early game before, but your NPCs having power instead of wound/kill and the flexibility of the different classes makes the game substantially easier, more than counterbalancing the overlord's early game 3-moves.


The monsters (and other upcoming overlord spells) may counterbalance that, but that's basically the point of those.  If the overall result is too easy or too hard we'll rebalance as necessary.

I actually hadn't had any problems with the early game, but I know a few people had felt that the opening could be kind of hard for new players, and that's sort of where I was coming from with those comments.

How does that defeat the purpose of adding them?  A few things to remember:

- If the overlord targets his tile with the summon, then on your first turn seeing the monsters they'll all be right next to the overlord.  Any NPC you send after the monsters on that turn will basically be guaranteed to die when the overlord moves next.

- Sure, you can have NPCs covering the area to kill the monsters as soon as they're outside the overlord's range, but the actual positioning to make that feasible and the use of the NPC time (and power) to accomplish that is highly non-trivial.  Even if the summoned monsters never kill an NPC or destroy a tile in your game they've still served a substantial purpose as a constraint you've had to deal with.


Anyway, thanks for the feedback, I'm just not sure we're talking about the same thing yet

Thanks for taking the time to reply, Keith.  This all makes sense.  These are largely my reactions to reading the patch notes, which is almost never the same as the reaction as actually playing the game!  I'll have to get deeper into it to get a better idea of how everything fits together, but it sounds like you have already thought about some of the things that I brought up.

[madcow]

It actually might be worth adding another step to the tutorial (on the second turn rather than the first) to make them open that help menu, then point out that more info gets added there as the game progresses. I've found when trying to introduce people that most of them miss it and feel fairly lost.

[wyvern83]

Don't know about caves, the surfaces tiles have had impassable areas, jumps that are just a bit too high, ran into that twice out of maybe an hour with the game and two turns in. Don't know about the other things, I haven't run into them yet, a few of the monsters are hard, had to jump over several and run away haha, because they were faster on the trigger than i was, but that was not too big a deal. 
-T

Ok, I'm a little concerned about these slices that are impassible, please send those to me if you run into them again. Not just Misery, but anyone.

Do you have any Feats yet, like Double or Triple Jump?

I've yet to come across a real impassible slice, obvious intended death traps not included, in any of my games. Invariably I've found that when I couldn't proceed forward it was because I didn't have the necessary Feat or Feats yet, be it Water Dash, Miniaturize, Double Jump, or Triple Jump or some combo thereof.

Most Feat-required spots are labeled with signs but not all of them are. I think I've come across a high jump that wasn't labeled before but I could have missed the sign as it was an outdoor chunk.

Miniaturize-required spots in Level-Up Towers need signs though, if they don't already, like the Skelebot Research Facilities do and a particularly mean low ceiling jump over a deep lava pool that I encountered once, also in a Level-Up Tower, could have also used a sign to warn me that one or more Feats would be needed to cross it.

Also I think Feats should get a tutorial explanation, or a more in-depth one, as I bumbled around as a new player unaware of their utility or importance for quite awhile until they were pointed out to me by other players on the forums. Even though I'm a Valley 1 veteran I didn't make the leap that such options were available as Valley 2 felt like a completely new game in enough ways that I made no assumptions about how it would play out.

[x4000]

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