Valley 2 Beta .807 "Melee Deux" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/02/valley-2-beta-807-melee-deux-released.html

This one is another smorgasbord-type release, with tons of things in all sorts of varying areas.  There's updated monster art, yet more nice-to-have style improvements to the strategic game interface, more sound effects work, more balance fine-tuning, and some new cheats.  Oh, also a new character and a new keybind for the world map movement of NPCs without opening the menu.

The really big changes in this one are all about melee, and the resistant-to-all-but-melee monsters.  Basically the touch, punch, and fist spells have all been completely reimagined from the ground up.  Rather than being high-power, high-caliber defensive spells that are hard to use, they are now low-caliber, low-power spells that have one of two utility purposes: either reducing an enemy's movement speed temporarily, or reducing their ranged attack firing rate.

These utility spells fill an interesting niche in terms of providing some new tactical combat options, while at the same time finally ditching those touch, punch, and fist spells that were almost universally disliked.  Those were definitely the weakest link in the player arsenal, and nothing we had been able to figure out made them any better.  Note of course that the whips and tridents are still alive and well, and still fulfill their same role that they already did.

The other big melee-related change is that now the monsters that were resistant-to-all-but-melee-and-ammo-attacks are now instead resistant-to-ALL-attacks-if-a-player-is-not-standing-close-enough-to-the-monster-in-question.  This makes them no longer class-specific or spell-specific, but means that whatever class you have chosen has to close the distance with these enemies and take them on up close.  This keeps the general feel of the ocean shallows, for instance, intact; but at the same time removes all of the frustrating class penalties associated with it.

More to come soon.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game.  If you have the beta on Steam, it will automatically update for you.  When you  launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found  if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have the standalone game, you can download that here.  If you already own the first game, just use your existing license key to unlock the sequel for free!

[Mick]

I noticed one small bug. In the end of turn review, the button at the left says no scrap was produced even if it was. This happens fairly consistently for me.

[Pepisolo]

Quick bug, there seems to be a line at the top of the new char running animation frames.

[nas1m]

I am a little sad that now that the only issue that impeded the use of touch range spells for blocking is resolved (see http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=10070) using them for blocking is no longer an option =  /. I rather liked this playstyle a lot - I just could not get it to work as reliably as I would have liked due to the issue linked above...

Any chance to get at least some touch spells of the old making back for blocking?  Always having to fall back to ammo spells seems a tad too much and/or expensive for blocking attacks mor than once or twice a chunk...

I would be happy with one mage class per tier.

Just to be clear, I yet have to try the new update (and I am sure the revised spells are fun and useful as well) - it just occurs to me that blocking enemy spells is no longer an option for next to all mage classes now, due to the only spell being available with the necessary caliber being the ammo spell - which in turn is too expensive to be used more regularly most of the time...

[Misery]

I am a little sad that now that the only issue that impeded the use of touch range spells for blocking is resolved (see http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=10070) using them for blocking is no longer an option =  /. I rather liked this playstyle a lot - I just could not get it to work as reliably as I would have liked due to the issue linked above...

Any chance to get at least some touch spells of the old making back for blocking?  Always having to fall back to ammo spells seems a tad too much and/or expensive for blocking attacks mor than once or twice a chunk...

I would be happy with one mage class per tier.

Just to be clear, I yet have to try the new update (and I am sure the revised spells are fun and useful as well) - it just occurs to me that blocking enemy spells is no longer an option for next to all mage classes now, due to the only spell being available with the necessary caliber being the ammo spell - which in turn is too expensive to be used more regularly most of the time...

As the caliber thing goes, I think that's part of what makes the concentration system important:  I find that there are many different spells that can stop enemy shots when I have some levels of concentration.

Though some of the caliber numbers could do with some tweaking.   Hard to come up with any specifics though.   One thing I can think of though, it'd make sense for slower moving & firing spells to have a higher caliber than fast moving & firing ones.  If a spell is changed to have a higher caliber, also lowering it's damage wouldnt be a bad idea.

But the concentration thing really does seem pretty important for this.

EDIT:    Also, I'm seeing alot of crawlers getting weird again.  But this time it's hard to pinpoint.... they're more random this time in what goofy things they do and when/where they do it.   But I've seen them randomly do backflips or walk upside-down AND backwards over flat ground or spin in place or other stuff....    Doing alot of crag areas right now, so these are all toads doing it, if that helps.   But something tells me other crawlers will be doing it too.


Also, there was this:  http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=10642  which was changed for this patch, but the problem is very definitely still happening.   I had one particular room where I entered it, and was just instantly covered in eyeballs while being shot at by those nasty water things with the splitting shots (in the crag areas). 

And that one can be a problem in outdoor areas too, just not as often.

Other than that, this is a good patch.   It's pretty darn neat to see everything coming together like this, and the game is more fun than ever now.

Also, the "see where it'll purify before you do it" change was a HUGE help.

[Nanashi]

Chris, the orange haired guy with the beard and the lightbulb in the back of his head is still random generating female names. Unless bearded ladies are the thing of the future, you might want to fix that.

[x4000]

For the thing about being swarmed with monsters, I really need a savegame of that happening if you still see it!

Thanks for the notes on other stuff folks, I think we have enough on each of those to work on them.

Regarding the touch range spells coming back, I really don't want to go near those with a ten food pole. Those were just too alienating to too many people and were more a source of complaints than anything.

[Nanashi]

Playtested a few hours of this patch - I don't think a binary change was necessarily a good idea, it seems to have changed one annoyance for another (I actually did use the melee high caliber spells quite a lot, since I prefer reactionary gameplay to active spam. I'm just trying to be less vocal about my playstyle), and just means we have a new bunch of obnoxious C4-esque shot-blockers to deal with. (nothing too frustrating)

The new melee spells sometimes have negative calibers (like the ice one on one of the interchangeable 2nd or 3rd tier ice mage classes which has -60 caliber), which makes the effect of slowing down fire rate completely pointless on monsters where you'd actually want to slow down fire rate because they're unlikely to even hit the monster in the first place - and you're dealing with the opportunity cost of just killing the monster, which would be much more effective. Balance on spell classes is slightly better, the tier 1 earth class is no longer useless, but now the third tier of spell classes is nearly completely interchangeable, especially due to lack of variety in ammo spells (way too many homing seekers which I never use because they seem to suffer from some kind of bipolar projectile menopause which makes them unreliable as heck and only home when they feel like it).

Since the death of high caliber counters, on Adept difficulty, I find the best way to deal with stages is just to run through the entire stage and ignore all enemies you can't kill in a second or less, and use the ones that you can to restore your health. Not particularly involving. AVWW's caliber system is incredibly binary because if your caliber is higher than the enemy's, you can ignore whatever the enemy does.

Would it be possible to implement easter eggs or cheat code options to do away with the entire caliber system entirely so that no shots block each other? I think it'd be an interesting way to play the game.

Edit: You know, for a spell that seems so incredibly popular whenever it's brought up in gameplay discussions, there sure aren't very many campfire-type spells in Valley 2. This is why I don't think balancing gameplay around campfire is a good idea.

[Pepisolo]

I actually quite liked the concept of ultra defensive counter touches. In practise they didn't work quite as well as you might have have hoped, but they were still usable. It did feel cool to punch your enemies attacks out of the air occasionally. These newer attacks also seem interesting, but I would prefer it if the movement speed and firing rate were rolled into the one attack. To increase variety, I think it'd be cool if there was at least one defensive touch spell per Tier, just to give the player the option of employing that reactive play-style. With the recent cooldown changes these types of attacks should also seem that little more usable.

[x4000]

In terms of the caliber system, I think it's absolutely crucial to the game -- if you don't have that, then all you do is walk up to enemies and spam shots at them and that's that.  Here you actually have to aim past their spells.

Regarding the new spells being really under-calibered, that's more or less the idea.  You don't need a utility spell like that against everyday small monsters.  They are a lot more helpful for things like the melee-range monsters (for the slowing) or the henchmen (for the cooldown-reduction).  Making them too easy to hit enemies with would be pretty unbalancing, I think.

I'll do a review of what player spells have what calibers, however.  Whips could probably use a buff, and I think would serve as excellent high-caliber counters.  I wasn't against that as a concept, but I felt like the melee stuff we had was really overlapping that improperly.

Regarding just running past monsters and not actually fighting them, that's certainly a valid strategy in Metroid, Cave Story, Castlevania 1, Castlevania 2, Zelda II, and so on.  The only things that are remotely exceptions there is the fact that you want EXP in Zelda II, and some various loot in Castlevania 2.  But those two mechanics were pretty unfavorably viewed by most, including myself.  So I'm not terribly concerned that it's possible to just run past the monsters if you want, given that this is something that is possible in all those games; if you're able to do that without dying, you're probably playing on a lower difficulty than you could really handle, anyway.  At a difficulty truly matching your skill, you'd die from that sort of free run.

[Misery]

Playtested a few hours of this patch - I don't think a binary change was necessarily a good idea, it seems to have changed one annoyance for another (I actually did use the melee high caliber spells quite a lot, since I prefer reactionary gameplay to active spam. I'm just trying to be less vocal about my playstyle), and just means we have a new bunch of obnoxious C4-esque shot-blockers to deal with. (nothing too frustrating)

The new melee spells sometimes have negative calibers (like the ice one on one of the interchangeable 2nd or 3rd tier ice mage classes which has -60 caliber), which makes the effect of slowing down fire rate completely pointless on monsters where you'd actually want to slow down fire rate because they're unlikely to even hit the monster in the first place - and you're dealing with the opportunity cost of just killing the monster, which would be much more effective. Balance on spell classes is slightly better, the tier 1 earth class is no longer useless, but now the third tier of spell classes is nearly completely interchangeable, especially due to lack of variety in ammo spells (way too many homing seekers which I never use because they seem to suffer from some kind of bipolar projectile menopause which makes them unreliable as heck and only home when they feel like it).

Since the death of high caliber counters, on Adept difficulty, I find the best way to deal with stages is just to run through the entire stage and ignore all enemies you can't kill in a second or less, and use the ones that you can to restore your health. Not particularly involving. AVWW's caliber system is incredibly binary because if your caliber is higher than the enemy's, you can ignore whatever the enemy does.

Would it be possible to implement easter eggs or cheat code options to do away with the entire caliber system entirely so that no shots block each other? I think it'd be an interesting way to play the game.

Edit: You know, for a spell that seems so incredibly popular whenever it's brought up in gameplay discussions, there sure aren't very many campfire-type spells in Valley 2. This is why I don't think balancing gameplay around campfire is a good idea.

I agree with the part where there should be more spells along the lines of Campfire, but beyond that the caliber system seems mostly fine to me.   There are spells other than just that that can block enemy shots... many ammo spells can do this (MOST of them, actually), and the Crescents can often be used to pop things as well.   There are some spells (pretty good number of them, actually) that GAIN the ability to slice through some types of bullets as your concentration rises, Miasma Slider is an example of one such spell.   I think the caliber system got more interesting overall with the concentration thing added in.    I think some caliber numbers could use a little tweaking, but overall I find it to be a brilliant mechanic.


As for the melee stuff, generally I play a very reactive style as well, because I have no patience and tend to be overly aggressive in basically any game, but I honestly just never used the punch spells for this purpose, or for much of anything, really.   They were for shallows areas, and that's it.   Their hit box was too strange and too small, and simply dodging the shots instead of punching them (and risking getting hit because you miss) always makes more sense, particularly on higher difficulties.

[Nanashi]

I've been intentionally sticking to Adept difficulty because it's the default difficulty which I assume game balance is built on and what I assume is the vanilla or core gameplay experience that most new players will experience.

And the point of the low caliber comment was - I'd only really want to slow down fire rate of enemies that have obnoxious fire patterns which are difficult to dodge, difficult to shoot past (steamships) and high caliber, which are exactly the kind of enemies which I'd have trouble hitting with a ridiculously low caliber spell in the first place. Those enemies (like the 6 fireball spamming skeletons or the crawler spiders with the really high caliber long distance shots) also tend to die in a second or two of focused fire, so I'd really have to have a good reason for hitting them with that spell rather than killing them outright with a stronger spell.

The point of caliber removal is that it also means you have to dodge enemy shots more often and enemies don't get trivialised by you having a higher caliber shot. It actually works both ways - running up in that situation you described is precisely what I do if my caliber is higher than the enemy shot because they can't do anything which is a coherent threat. If caliber didn't exist, I'd actually have to worry about dodging when approaching. But I respect your design decisions mainly because the system probably deserves a fair go and probably hasn't been explored very much by other contemporary games.

But anyway, please don't balance around campfire unless it becomes more common. I can't emphasize this enough. People aren't going to play the entire game as Forgician.

edit: I've never had trouble with the old melee spells hitting because punches are a matter of timing as much as dodging is, and dodging carries the risk of changing your position, while melee reactives did not. This is sometimes very important because moving is a bad idea. And in many situations, dodging simply is not possible (cramped areas with an enemy spamming high caliber shots at you). I didn't even really think the hitboxes were too small either.

[tigersfan]

I've been intentionally sticking to Adept difficulty because it's the default difficulty which I assume game balance is built on and what I assume is the vanilla or core gameplay experience that most new players will experience.

And the point of the low caliber comment was - I'd only really want to slow down fire rate of enemies that have obnoxious fire patterns which are difficult to dodge, difficult to shoot past (steamships) and high caliber, which are exactly the kind of enemies which I'd have trouble hitting with a ridiculously low caliber spell in the first place. Those enemies (like the 6 fireball spamming skeletons or the crawler spiders with the really high caliber long distance shots) also tend to die in a second or two of focused fire, so I'd really have to have a good reason for hitting them with that spell rather than killing them outright with a stronger spell.

The point of caliber removal is that it also means you have to dodge enemy shots more often and enemies don't get trivialised by you having a higher caliber shot. It actually works both ways - running up in that situation you described is precisely what I do if my caliber is higher than the enemy shot because they can't do anything which is a coherent threat. If caliber didn't exist, I'd actually have to worry about dodging when approaching. But I respect your design decisions mainly because the system probably deserves a fair go and probably hasn't been explored very much by other contemporary games.

But anyway, please don't balance around campfire unless it becomes more common. I can't emphasize this enough. People aren't going to play the entire game as Forgician.

edit: I've never had trouble with the old melee spells hitting because punches are a matter of timing as much as dodging is, and dodging carries the risk of changing your position, while melee reactives did not. This is sometimes very important because moving is a bad idea. And in many situations, dodging simply is not possible (cramped areas with an enemy spamming high caliber shots at you). I didn't even really think the hitboxes were too small either.

I don't think we've been balancing around Campfire. I view that like a set of training wheels, and totally not meant to be used in the entire game.

[x4000]

Yes, adept is the default and what new players would be playing on.  So in that sense I really appreciate it.  But you have to remember that the first-time experience is really different from once you get experienced at the game.  A new player won't be as good as you at the game, and so will not be able to just bypass the enemies like you are.

I'm not balancing anything around campfire, I'm not sure where that's coming from.  To me, campfire is a throwaway early spell for training -- that's why there are not more of them.  It would be incredibly unbalanced in the late game.  It's a training aid.

Regarding the caliber system... the thing that does bug me a little bit about it is that player shots can be higher-caliber too often, you're right.  I think that in general players need to have low-caliber shots except for shots that are specifically high-caliber.  Personally I think that a revised and simplified system would be as follows -- erasing everything about the current caliber system:

1. Spells are either "low caliber" or "normal caliber" or "high caliber" or "ultimate caliber."
2. All player spells are low caliber except for the things that Misery pointed out: crescents, and whips and tridents, and the next-highest charge shot power.  Those would all be normal caliber.  The ammo spells and highest-tier charge shot would largely be high caliber.  Reckless spells would be ultimate caliber.
3. All monster shots would pretty much be normal caliber.  Henchmen shots would be high caliber.  Overlord shots would be ultimate caliber.
4. If a lower caliber touches a higher caliber, it dies.  If two spells of the same caliber touch one another, they both die.

Thus things are really stacked slightly more in favor of the monsters than they are now, there's no fiddling with specific caliber numbers, and in general there's no cases where you are ridiculously overpowered.  But there are a number of spells that you can use for blocking enemy shots in interesting ways, and those are clearly laid out and reliably consistent across enemies.

This seems like a really obvious simplification of the caliber system based on your notes and my experiences with it lately, actually.  Not sure why I didn't think of it before, but I think this would be a lot stronger.

Thoughts?

[Oralordos]

I wonder how that would combine with the concentration bonuses and the caliber increasing perks?

I really really like how in the current system, most of your shots are blocked, but if you get a level or two of concentration, some of your higher caliber spells get through.