What I don't like in AVWW and probably never will. Specific explanations of why.

[Baleur]

First off, this one is mostly aimed at the devs. You want feedback, here's feedback
Through my life playing games i've come to understand that the absolutely most important thing in games is the pure fact that they must be entertaining on some level, either instant gratification or drawn out over the course of several hours with a dangling carrot luring the player onwards, making it hard to stop playing.

This is achieved in many various ways, in first person shooters, most action games and racing games it is achieved by having such a good "feel" in the game mechanics, shooting or racing, that the enjoyment and gratification comes from that alone. Add on top of that the fact that most fps, action or racing games these days have a sense of progression (Forza being a prime example), you get both instant AND long term gratification.
Civilization or Europa Universalis does it entirely differently, you get a small trickle of gratification for each small step you take in forming your empire, leading to a constant build-up of more and more sense of pride and enjoyment in seeing what you created. To some extent this applies to Minecraft and such games as well.


Now, on to AVWW and why, despite how badly I want to love this game, despite how incredibly much value I place on replayability and dynamically generated worlds, I will probably not be interested in the long term. I looked over this post several times, tried to find a way not to make it sound so dreary and negative, but i trust that the readers are intelligent enough to know a personal opinion based on sound facts when they see one, as opposed to a short-sighted whine thread


1. The combat. First off I'm not a fan of platforming, nor of sidescrollers. But other games did it in an interesting way. Terraria is the latest example. Contra is an old example. What made combat 'fun' there (the instant gratification bit) is that you had a good ebb and flow to the combat. Offense and defence. The controls worked fluidly and you never once had to either pause the game or fuff around with your inventory. Also, the weapons and powers themselves were very enjoyable to use due to their chaotic and expected way of behaving.

In AVWW I must be honest about how much I hate the combat.. The gameplay coding itself is not bad, the collision with enemies, the movement feel, all is fine. But the spells are what I dislike immensely. Everything just seems to be a slow-recharge one-shot ball o hurt, where accuracy is so important that fun is taken out of the equasion. And why are there no weapons of any description at all? Here is the possibility of a Fallout-esque world with rag-tag crafted and duct-taped together weapons.
That is what I enjoy about shmups, fun weapons. Where you can actually have a laugh during combat rather than shooting 1 projectile per second at an enemy doing the same.
Yes you can 'spam' spells in somewhat of a fast succession, but then you're out of mana and done for.
Why do i have to fight the controls everytime an enemy appears on screen? Why do i have to pause and switch out spells everytime a new resistant enemy appears? (yes i can use the numberkeys to fire another spell, but while jumping and dodging that isnt fun. Why can i not just scroll my mouse wheel to select a different spell in the hotbar, then using my left mouse button as normal to use it? Would be so much smoother, so much more fluid.
Simply put, I just have absolutely no enjoyment what so ever out of the combat in AVWW. I wish i found it enjoyable, i really do, but i can't kid myself.


2. Platforming as the main gameplay element. Platforming on it's own isn't wrong in any way, and randomly generated worlds is something incredibly interesting.
But here, i find myself playing the game for hours on end doing the exact same thing. If i play Civ, EU, a racing game, or even a slow burner like Dwarf Fortress, i constantly get a trickle of enjoyment from each small step on the way. Here, i just don't. There is zero enjoyment for me in exploring the world, navigating tedious buildings and caverns to find homogenous uninteresting resources. Over and over again. Rinse and repeat.
The enemies would spice things up, they would really add the sense of excitement and enjoyment i seek, if the combat was enjoyable to me. If it was not a 1-hit-1-dodge exercise in tedium. It's hard, don't get me wrong. But it just does not have the magical sense of 'fun' for me.


3. Due to the above, when the vast majority of the game consists of 2 elements which fail to capture the magical 'fun' factor, I can not see myself being interested in the long term.
If the combat was different, with actual weapons as opposed to just spells, i'd enjoy the entire game more. The sad truth is, when the incredibly archaic and (lets be honest) horrible combat in Minecraft is more enjoyable and heart pounding, something needs to change.
If the platforming or exploration was different, with real wonders and interesting stuff to find and less tedious place-platform, jump, place-platform, jump gameplay, i'd enjoy the entire game more as well. When the extremely slow progression and tiny-trickle of enjoyment in a game like Dungeon Crawl surpasses it, again something needs to change.

But as it stands now, i don't. I just wanted to share why, as i feel it is important to properly convey the reasons why you dislike elements of a game.

[TechSY730]

The fact that most spells/projectiles are either "slowish" balls of death or too expensive to rapid fire melee spells has been noted and is being worked on. (Spell variety in options, "archtype", and mana costs are in the works, IIRC. The mana cost issue is probably going to apply to some of the existing spells as well)

Also, there are several threads about how to streamline the keyboard and the UI. Having an option for the mouse wheel to do something has been brought up several times as well.

So for those two points, I wanted to let you know that they are know and being worked on.

The rest though...well...these are sort of the kind of things that would not be easy to fix within the time-frame for 1.0, as it would require a restructuring of quite a bit of the game.
Also, some of it can just boil down to what people look for in exploration games, aka, personal taste.


Not trying to argue your opinion, just wanted to let you know that those two particular points are being addressed.

EDIT: As always, I am NOT a dev, I am just repeating what I have heard to the best of my understanding.

[keith.lamothe]

Why can i not just scroll my mouse wheel to select a different spell in the hotbar, then using my left mouse button as normal to use it? Would be so much smoother, so much more fluid.

Chris has already put that in for 0.930, interesting coincidence that you mentioned it later in the day

Not all the spells are 1-shot-per-second (ish) even now, though I guess most feel that way.  Was testing a lieutenant battle about 30 minutes ago with a bunch of cooldown-reduction buffs on, and all I can say is "forest rage machine gun"   Poor guy never had a chance.

We also had planned various homing/split-projectile/etc things as part of the crests system, but that got cut in favor of enchants.

Anyway, we welcome the feedback (though honestly there's nothing we can do about stuff at this level pre-1.0), and perhaps something will change   It's also possible that it's just not your kind of game (honestly, I'm not much for platformer/shmup either, but AVWW is way more interesting than anything that label has seemed to me in the past), but I wouldn't consider that the inevitable conclusion yet.

[Bluddy]

I appreciate your honesty. I too came here and posted a fairly scathing criticism as my first post a while back. However, my opinion is that the core of the game that was already available then, together with the changes made since that time, have made for a game that's really quite excellent.

Regarding the combat, I think it's actually very good. As you mentioned, the feel is good, the collision's good... it may not have weapons, but IMO it's pretty much spot-on. Perhaps it doesn't help that Arcen invoked the post-apocalyptic trope. This is a magical world and the apocalypse was magical in nature. The thing that helped me most with the combat though was switching to keyboard-only controls (one of the many control options for the game). In my opinion, keyboard-only controls suit this game better than the mouse controls that come standard with the game. I beg of you to try the keyboard-only controls before deciding that you don't enjoy the combat (the setting is called Movement Directed Keyboard Aiming, and turn off the Keyboard/Gamepad Aiming Reticule. I also bind the spells to QWEASDZXC ie the WASD controls, but the numpad is good too). IMO the reason you're having trouble is that it's too hard mentally to combine platformer jumping + mouse aiming + triggering different spells at will. In an FPS, you have your selected weapon and it's clearly displayed at the bottom of the screen. There's not that much to worry about at the same time. Imagine an FPS where you can shoot any weapon you have at will at any direction and where you also have to be aware of your own body position so you can dodge shots and jump above enemies at the same time. For me that's just too much to consider at once. Switching to keyboard controls made the combat 'click' (ironically) for me. I think once you do that, handling the cooldown time of spells becomes fairly effortless.

Now about the exploration. I think this is the biggest hurdle facing the game. The key here is that you're not expected to just go off exploring indefinitely. Rather, you're supposed to explore intelligently, by picking and choosing which rooms you go to, which caves are most worthwhile to explore etc. This is a problem because every game out there teaches you to explore as much as possible, or at least as much as you want. If you find yourself moving indefinitely from one room/cave to another without a goal, you're in trouble, because the world is too big to be interesting that way. In a sense, AVWW tells you to limit your own exploration, which is something that's very hard for gamers to do, because how does one know there won't be something more interesting in the next room or in the next cave? But you're supposed to be able to say: ok, I've got enough supplies and I've had enough exploration for now. I'll stop exploring. And the best thing to do is to take a step back, think about your situation, and find the next goal(s) to pursue. And this is very very different than what other games do, which is why it's so hard for gamers to adjust to this different mentality. But once you DO adjust to it, you GET the game, and it's pretty awesome.

There are lots of goals to aspire to: whether it be unlockables, or getting/upgrading a spell, or beating a mission, or finding a secret mission, or changing the world via guardian powers, there's a lot of stuff, and there's going to be a lot more stuff after the game is released. The key is keeping yourself focused. Actually the first key is getting to enjoy the combat, and in my case the most helpful thing was switching to keyboard-only mode. And once you get the mentality of the game, exploration itself becomes fun too.

[x4000]

I appreciate the honesty also, but there's also not a lot I can do about that.  My experience so far has been: a) this has been our best-selling title by a long-shot; b) we've had tons of folks like Bluddy who were really skeptical and/or scathing and who helped us revise things, intensely, until they really popped; c) we just got back from showing this to about 300 people in person who got to play it hands-on, and it was a crazy positive experience for them.

In general, a post saying "I don't really like the fundamental premise of most of the game" isn't all that helpful, because if that's true... like Keith said, it may just not be the game for you.  And that's cool -- I don't expect everyone to want everything we put out.  People have differing tastes, and that's just the way things are.  There are many games that are considered really excellent by a lot of people, that I just think are horrible.

I appreciate the way that you phrased things and didn't come across as whiny or demanding, etc.  But, pretty much none of the complaints are terribly actionable (other than the ones that, coincidentally, we addressed earlier in the day; but let's face it, those were your minor nits).  It's kind of like "I really want to like SimCity, but I hate having to build roads and zoning and so on.  I'd rather just build buildings directly, and not worry about all those overlays and so on."  And there are actually games that do just that sort of thing -- citybuilders, as my example here, really vary incredibly widely.  So do Metroidvania titles and procedurally generated games.

Which is what simply makes me conclude it sounds like you're not in the target audience for this game.  If the core things it's trying to do, you don't like, then that's kind of a problem.  Having tactical combat with accuracy that matters is important to the game; but you don't like that accuracy is required.  You don't like that it's sidescrolling, or that it's a platformer.  Well... not a lot I can say to that.  If you expect me to convert you to two whole genres you hate, I'd certainly love to (and I think those genres are really fun, personally).  I guess I can safely say that anyone who hates the genres we're blending is not someone that we're trying to win over as part of our core audience for this particular game.

I'm rambling now, and short on time and need to stop anyhow.  I don't take particular offense to your post, though I am a bit bemused by it; I guess I'm honored you think that I could change your opinion of several entire genres with the magic of my game.  Sorry I let you down.

[Volatar]

this has been our best-selling title by a long-shot

ALREADY?!? 

[keith.lamothe]

this has been our best-selling title by a long-shot

ALREADY?!? 

No, not by a long shot

I believe he meant in terms of beta sales.

[Volatar]

Ok heh. I was having a hard time grasping that.

[x4000]

Sorry, I misspoke.  But yeah, it's outsold any of our other betas something like... 4:1?  I don't know, I haven't looked at the updated numbers.  I believe that Keith was pointing out a few weeks back that in terms of direct sales, AVWW-since-September-2011 has outsold AIWar-since-April-2010, though.  That's ignoring other distributors, and our direct sales are only about 5% of our total sales volume anyhow (if that; that number is outdated, too).

But anyhow, it's been an amazing beta, far and away above anything else we've ever done before in terms of public betas.  What that will mean in terms of once it goes 1.0 is anyone's guess, but it's not a bad sign at least.

[eRe4s3r]

3. Due to the above, when the vast majority of the game consists of 2 elements which fail to capture the magical 'fun' factor, I can not see myself being interested in the long term.

If the combat was different, with actual weapons as opposed to just spells, i'd enjoy the entire game more. The sad truth is, when the incredibly archaic and (lets be honest) horrible combat in Minecraft is more enjoyable and heart pounding, something needs to change.

If the platforming or exploration was different, with real wonders and interesting stuff to find and less tedious place-platform, jump, place-platform, jump gameplay, i'd enjoy the entire game more as well. When the extremely slow progression and tiny-trickle of enjoyment in a game like Dungeon Crawl surpasses it, again something needs to change.

But as it stands now, i don't. I just wanted to share why, as i feel it is important to properly convey the reasons why you dislike elements of a game.

First off, I have to admit that when read Baleur post something i take note, while I don't interact with him at all I know he is active in MANY forums and plenty of those as modder and art creator. So he is not a gamer noob, he has probably played more games than many others here. Maybe not more than me ^^

Secondly, I paragraphed the above quote, Ignore that ;P

Thirdly, the -3- and nearly everything Baleure mentions in that is imo what "breaks" the game for me as well. It is not really that I don't like the game, I already had my moneys worth of fun with it even before it was out, and plan to play it through at least once or so when its complete. But the game is really not doing anything particularly great when it comes to platforming or combat. And that is sadly what we do 99% of the game.

The combat is what breaks it for me because

Well, simply put. The spells don't have weight or physical force. My attacks don't "short-stun" enemies and those that do .. well it doesn't feel right, enemy attacks are also very fast. Float in a straight line and require VERY high precision to dodge. While my attacks also require very high precision (the lack of a aim-line drawn from where I stand to where I aim is particularly bad). There is also not "hit" effect, no weight to a hit, and no weight to being hit. In essence, it feels like we are shooting cotton pebbles at the enemy, differently colored ones but still....

There is also no dedicated block function, which means dodge is the only way (and dodge is not always possible) my suggestion to turn shields into a "on button press" function that ties directly into gameplay was ignored, so we have no viable block ability. No core gameplay integrated block, means 50% less tactics in combat. Less dynamics, less fluidity.

Secondly, exploration is hampered by a real lack of stuff to find. But also by some very very tiresome level design (looking at you, maze rooms filled with 60000 boxes). This ties into platforming which is not all that bad actually, the physics feel right.. well they do.. until we fall into water. The real problem is that placing boxes and platforms is imo... a really really bad way to platform (a wordplay). Climbing and grappling are options, they are not used. Even though anyone can see that climbing and grappling would instantly fit this game better flow wise. As opposed to platforms and boxes, We could simply run against a ledge.. jump.. hold shift to grasp on to the wall, then hit jump again which automatically pushes me up or when I press jump while moving in a direction jumps in that direction from the wall.

That way, we could climb (jump.. shift.. jump .. shift)

And as for grappling, a future upgrade, it could tie with jump spell and simply catapults us across a map as long as there is something to grapple ;p Can also be combined with holding shift so that..

grapple.. to wall.. hold shift.. grasp wall.. press jump... jump upwards....grapple.. and so on.


Also
This




I know my text may sound a bit presumptuous so remember to a but a "IMO" before everything. I don't claim supreme knowledge of game design, but I do know what a game needs to pull me in.

First: Movement has to be fluid and fun.
Second: Combat has to be fluid with depth, and fun.
Third: Exploration has to be worthwhile, with puzzles even, and fun.

[x4000]

Sigh.  I didn't really expect this until next week, but here we go.  To boil it down as simply and briefly as possible:

1. There are a hundred right ways to make a game, with various pros and cons, and ten million wrong ones.  Or something to that effect.

2. Out of those hundred right ways, some are better than others for some of the people some of the time.  Other people will complain.

3. As a developer, you have to accept that you'll never please all of the people all of the time.  Thus, particularly when someone says "I don't like your premise," or "I don't like the genres you're using," that's kind of it.  There's not much discussion left to be had. 

Pitch a sports game to me, and I'm no help to you at all, despite not being "some gamer noob" either.  It's not about noobishness, it's about taste.  Not in a pretentious way, but in the sense that everyone has their own taste, and there's no changing that, and no one game can be all things to all people.

First: Movement has to be fluid and fun.
Second: Combat has to be fluid with depth, and fun.
Third: Exploration has to be worthwhile, with puzzles even, and fun.

Also, I will say:

First: it is.
Second: boy is it.
Third: Wow, it totally is.

And you can't prove me wrong, nor can I prove you wrong... because... taste.  If you don't think it's fun and I do, we'll just never agree.  I could change it to be more the way you want, but then it would be less the way I want.  And that's kind of self-defeating when I went into business to make the sort of games that I want to play because nobody else was making them. 

I'm always happy to have ideas from people who get the core ideas and want to help make it better.  That's cool with me, and we have tons of people involved in that.  But when someone comes and says "no, forget all that crap, let's do something totally else," that's basically trying to hijack my game and turn it into something it's not.  And that's not really cool with me.  People should feel free to say what they think, but what can I really say in return to something like that? 

I mean, if it were you and you were making a game, and I thought that it wasn't fun, what would you say to me?  You're making NCAA Football, a serious sim, and I want it to be more like NFL Blitz 2K, with more of a cartoony overtone, for instance.  There's not really a response to that except, "well, that's not really the kind of game I'm trying to make."  I don't mean it in a rude way, it's just a literally frustrating problem.  Everybody is super bright here, but we don't all have identical taste; sometimes that's going to create tension.  Other times that's going to mean you don't like something I make, and that's okay. 

I don't like every book by any of my favorite authors (and in fact I loathe some of them).  They're still my favorite authors, and the books they wrote that connected with me are still my favorite books.  I'm running out of metaphors here.  But there seems to be an expectation that if you liked AI War, you should defacto like AVWW and there's something wrong with AVWW if you don't.  To that I simply have to say: no.  There's a chance you might like both, and great if you do, but largely AVWW is aimed at an entirely different audience.

[eRe4s3r]

But is it fluid movement when you have stop, find the button for platforms, find location to place platforms, and carefully jump on one and then to next and repeat the careful placing 20+ times to cross a chasm? This is very accuracy requiring puzzle'y. And this is even fun once or twice, but it is a the defacto-mode of movement in some caves. And that then, becomes very slow to move through for relatively little gain.

And.. well there are some mission levels that are .... evil.... in one, it was a Time Rift thingy (find the not fitting enemy) the room was huge and I needed more than 100 platforms to get everywhere. Zad is very excessive platforming, hehe

Also i lost that mission and didn't get my platforms back 

by the way, with my 3 bullet points I didn't imply that the current game is anything i stated not, i merely stated what games in generally need to do for me to like them. And AVVW does many things right of those i listed, and some (few) things relating to platforming and combat it does so much differently that it becomes.. well, not fluid. However vague a description that my be I got lazy with that. But for me the game is FUN, it is merely doing some very odd things in-between the fun that drag it down for me and make it not a long-term kind of game.. I really dislike the platforms and well, simply miss a sort of combo system

I don't think any gamer dislikes games merely because they do things differently. ^^

[Martyn van Buren]

Well, +1 for this sort of game.  I'm really surprised how much I'm coming to like this sort of "aimless Zelda" thing.  I remember being pretty dubious about not having a story, but environ is turning out to be a pretty chill place to play around. It is like having a whole game dedicated to getting lost in adventure RPGs, which was generally the best part. AVWW ought to exist just because there isn't anything else like it.

Writing that, tho, I realize I am really hoping that eventually we'll get some of the more Oregon Trail-ish features Chris was talking about a long time back to get you more involved with solving NPCs problems and improving towns.

 

[x4000]

If you don't like platforms, that easy enough: invest in leg enchants heavily. Get jump heigh increases and double or later triple jump. Add on ride the lightning to make it quadruple jump. Heck, jump over to lightning rocket if you prefer.

Or invest in damage buffs and then play as a bat. That 50% reduction can be counteracted with enchants.

In terms of a combo system, we talked through many and they all came out pretty lame. I've never played a game with what I felt was a good combo system, personally, either. Doesn't bode well for me making one, but we'll see. You never know, long term. A lot of things happened to ai war post 1.0 that I never would have predicted, and they were all for the better.

Right now I really, really need to focus elsewhere though.

[eRe4s3r]

I already invested in falling damage negation for legs, as that seems to be pretty vital.... if you dash + lightning jump ;p

Now playing as a bat with damage buffs THAT is a really cool idea. Heh.. you should tell us that in the tutorial.

Except I don't like bats. Nothing some graphical "modding" can't change though! Mhhhh.. actually that is a cool idea... mhhhh