A Bit of Feedback

[Pencil]

Hello,

First of all I would just like to say that I really love AVWW 1 and 2. The sequel, especially. It's a very fresh and entertaining foray into a new field while carrying with it a lot of nostalgia from my early youth. The Megaman influences are especially appreciated.

I have a bit of a suggestion though, and its mainly regarding coins and equipment. A lot of equipment is very imbalanced in terms of usefulness. For example, a piece of gear that adds +80% is less useful than a piece that adds -80% damage taken, because the -80% damage taken gear will last longer due to the very nature of equipment. Since you're taking 80% less damage, that means your gear is getting damaged at a much slower pace than it would if you simply had +80% health.

Second, I think that coins are very much useless. You get them only by defeating Demoniaca's soldiers. And it takes several fights to earn you enough coin to.. buy your way out of completing an area? I understand that some areas can get very difficult, but using a resource specifically to avoid playing a section of the game diminishes the value of that aspect of the game. I don't necessarily disagree with this idea, but I feel that coins should also have another use. I personally feel that their value would benefit from making equipment more permanent. Allow us to keep a small variety of equipment in a sort of inventory, perhaps only accessible on the strategic overview. We could then swap out pieces of gear to choose an adequate piece for our current objective or goal. Adjust the way equipment works now so that as it degrades from +10 to +1 it is reduced in effectiveness on a similar scale (so a piece that gives +100 movement speed at +10 might only provide +10 movement speed at +1). And then, rather than break and be tossed away, we could use coins to repair equipment. Perhaps repairing equipment might even require a new structure to be controlled or purified. This might require another look at how quickly gear degrades, how we acquire coins, and gear bonuses in general, but it would add another avenue to the value of coins and equipment itself. Otherwise, coins seem like a very strange addition to the game that serve only one purpose: To allow you to "buy out" of world tiles and avoid playing the game.

What are your thoughts?

[Oralordos]

Hello and welcome to the forums!

The mercenary coins were a system that took a while to come to an acceptable solution to here. Eventually Arcen decided on the current system. Yes they are for skipping a region, but you want to save them for a region you really dislike. Some people just aren't good against the specific monsters certain regions spawn. Other good places to use them at are Deciduous Forests during the night, cold areas before you get a Cold Dispersal Tower, and hot areas before you get a Heat Dispersal Tower.

As for equipment, they are designed to be temporary bonuses. Yes some equipment will last longer than others, but a -80% damage taken is less impressive to me than a +shots equipment. And when I'm playing to my difficulty I take enough damage that even the -80% damage will die pretty quickly.

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the forums and to the game

Individual pieces of equipment will vary wildly in usefulness from one another, even having some pieces that boost the same stat but boost it more.  -80% damage taken is a lot better than +80% health, but that's not really a problem because you're not really in a position do to a lot of min/max'ing on equipment: what's in the chest in front of you and what you have on (if anything) are your choices, and whichever you pick will go away once you take enough hits anyway.  So if you find a piece of equipment that's just head-and-shoulders better than your current piece, just rejoice and put it on

On the merc coins thing, yea, I don't think there's a ton of point to that myself but it was considered preferable to dropping coins from the game altogether (previously they could be used to hire temporary NPC allies but that never worked well).  And the current coins do have one very important use (already mentioned by Oralordos) : purifying a region that for whatever reason you simply couldn't survive/complete on your own because you lack the requisite feat or dispersal tower or whatever.

[Mick]

What if an alternative use for them was to spawn a new follower of your choice in a purified tile?

[Panopticon]

I'd rather the Purification from the coins than getting a new survivor. So far survivors haven't been hard to acquire in any of the games I've played, but the ability to purify an inaccessible or just total pain in the butt tile is a pretty valuable ability even if it doesn't feel very tangible or exciting.

I was thinking maybe boosting it's purification ability may not be a bad thing though. Have it purify an extra tile or something in a random direction perhaps. Or maybe something like an extremely localized Amp tower. That'd probably be hell to balance though.

[madcow]

If there were any alternative to purifying tiles, I would like to see the ability to buy perks. Perhaps even let you buy a (random of course) perk for a given level rather than filling up the lowest tier.

[keith.lamothe]

What if an alternative use for them was to spawn a new follower of your choice in a purified tile?

So long as coins can be acquired in the sideview areas, they cannot provide any direct strategic benefit or suddenly there's a motivation to "grind" coins in sideview in order to gain advantage on the strategic map.

The current purification thing doesn't have that problem as all the coins let you do is effectively destroy a windstorm generator (something you can already do in sideview) "from orbit".

[Panopticon]

You just filled my head with visions of Mercenary Space Marines hitting the ground in a Valley 2 biome with drop pods, gunning their way through the slices in their power armor and then smacking the Wind Generator with a tactical nuke.

Awesome.

[keith.lamothe]

You just filled my head with visions of Mercenary Space Marines hitting the ground in a Valley 2 biome with drop pods, gunning their way through the slices in their power armor and then smacking the Wind Generator with a tactical nuke.

Awesome.

I totally want to see that.

"Forgician? Bah, try Techmarine."

[Winge]

As for equipment, they are designed to be temporary bonuses. Yes some equipment will last longer than others, but a -80% damage taken is less impressive to me than a +shots equipment. And when I'm playing to my difficulty I take enough damage that even the -80% damage will die pretty quickly.

I love +x Extra Shots!  It's really fun (and highly suicidal) when using Rocket spells.   Less damage taken is pretty nice, but being able to one-shot things easier is definitely better.  I've even been tempted to take +1,440% Damage, Self-Immolation gear for fun.  I'm pretty sure I couldn't self-sustain through the burning, though...I'd have to drop that gear like it's hot...

You just filled my head with visions of Mercenary Space Marines hitting the ground in a Valley 2 biome with drop pods, gunning their way through the slices in their power armor and then smacking the Wind Generator with a tactical nuke.

Awesome.

I totally want to see that.

"Forgician? Bah, try Techmarine."

Purge the Overlord!