Hoo boy, this changes a ton:
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Skyward_Collapse_-_Pre-Beta_Release_Notes#Alpha_0.816General things:
1. Defensive towers are not so OP anymore.
2. Gods are just about useless in a fight now, except when they're on a rampage. This changes EVERYTHING about the latter two rounds of the game, making them way harder (and getting back to our original concepts, and away from the impossible-to-lose scenarios that some folks could create).
3. All of the god and mythological tokens now have cooldowns that vary based on the difficulty group you're playing in. This changes a HUGE amount of the game as well, because now you can't spam the powerful ones. You have to consider the opportunity cost of using them now versus later. And if you've already used them and now find yourself in a corner... well, that's a crutch you can no longer lean on. You have to use something else instead, and that might have more side effects than you want (aka, the crazier god powers).
I'm increasingly thinking that having god-specific Woes really isn't going to be needed, thanks in particular to the new cooldowns stuff and the fact that god selection is random now. I think you'll need all the crazy abilities you can get, in most games (at a high level, anyhow). Not every ability every game, but that's not the idea. Anyway, that makes me want to divert all efforts to general-purpose woes and catastrophic woes rather than getting into a third category that you see less often.
4. There are some key interface additions that we made, particularly to town centers but also somewhat to the sidebar on the right. Hopefully those are happy-making.
5. Oh yeah, the way the unit AI works in terms of evaluating risk is now really different. This is going to make battles play out completely differently since the guys are cowardly now and don't want to engage stronger units if they can help it; instead preferring to go attack enemy buildings if there's not someone weaker than them.
So between that and the god changes, combat is really just a completely new thing now in terms of the flow of it. Should be a lot more challenging and interesting, actually. Hopefully not too challenging on Easy, though.
And there are other minor tweaks, as well.
General thoughts:
- At this point it looks like the Woes are being well-received and accomplishing what they were supposed to, which is a huge relief and quite gratifying to see.
- At this point, Josh and I are both thinking that the game is not in need of more woes as the very next thing. We want to do tons more before 1.0, but this isn't the highest-priority thing right this instant, we don't think.
- Instead we're going to focus on getting some of the stats and other grognard-specific stuff in place, along with some of the other tweaks and tuning that will affect the feel of the game in general. And finishing up multiplayer. Please give us a day or so on these before flooding us with suggestions on this, as we're still reacting to your last batch (many of which are already addressed, but not remotely all). But then let's see what makes sense to do from there.
- Balance and bugfixing are of course ongoing through anything and everything else.
- Then it's back to more woes, and adding in some achievements while we're at it. And that's pretty much the path to 1.0 at this point.
Cheers!
