- lack of item drops in general (health, creds, items, etc) because most new rooms don't have the white cubes
That is actually a good spot, yeah. In my rooms, I've hardly used those glass containers. I'll add a bunch to mine where appropriate, cheers. I'll leave Draco take a look at his own rooms. Maybe it's just my rooms that are really lacking them.
- a lot of the new melee enemies are BS (dunno their names sorry, alternate level enemies)
These are probably the Sidestep Abmoogs. Those are actually slightly broken in the build that was sent out, so that they don't actually side-step (I think), which makes them a bit more terminator-esque. I've also slightly nerfed the movement speed for the next build. We'll take it easy with these guys, though. A couple of rounds of tweaks should get them into good shape.
- the alternate level seems a little too hard, not balanced based on what floor you're on
Not sure about this. Generally, there are later floor enemies that unlock, so there should be a clear difference between late and early game. I am trying something a bit different with the elemental enemies, though, in just having same floor variants, I might have to change that in the future, although it's a bit early to say. The enemy HP values could be looked at a bit more, perhaps.
you seem to not get as much XP as you used to get, so less health, damage, etc. could be associated with item drops being rare.
XP values should be similar, I think. Unless something weird is going on.
Firebug Flame Hose needs a nerf
I'm not at the correct computer just now, but I'll put a nerf in later, cheers.
The other errors with Challenge rooms and enemy seeding are all known, yeah. The empty challenge rooms won't be fixed for a long while.
Anyway. Biggest issue right now: Visual confusion. WAY too much of it. I'll put it this way: in just going through a run on normal mode, I've had a few too many times where I cant even entirely tell what's going on. Now, if *I* am having issues with this, it's definitely a problem. I'm used to Mushihime and it's infinite fields of tangled purple doom, and it doesn't give me that much trouble. The problem: Too many "large" bullets and particle effects. Way too many. These larger shots should be used sparingly. The problem isn't the hitbox size, it's simply the visual size of the sprite. It sort of "bloats" everything. But it also makes it nigh-impossible to tell what is going on when two patterns intersect, which is very frequent in this game. I'll just put it this way: There's a reason why the normal floors are using mostly bullets from the "simple" bullet art folder. Same with most of the bosses. There's already a lot that players need to process visually as it is.
Yeah, I'm going to have to just be reactive about this. If anybody can point out any specific problem enemies, I'll take a look. For myself, though, I don't really struggle visually for some reason. It may just be that it doesn't really bother me that much, even when I can't see fully what's going on, heh. I like the chaos of the moment too much. The only thing I do find bothersome visually is at some points when there is visual glare from the backdrops behind. As for particles, the only enemies that are using particles, I think, are 3 attackers which give off an AOE -- the drainer, energy drainer, and the healer, I think. I'm going through the enemies in my mind, but those are the only ones I can think of, and those don't even shoot at you, so it's just an area around the enemy. Should be easy enough to see. It's a general rule to not use particles on enemy shots, only player shots. This then also helps you distinguish between enemy and player shots a bit. As for large bullets, those can be looked at, yeah. Someone is going to need to point out the problem enemies for me, though.
A couple of other things here.... elemental damage. It's hard to even tell what this is. It seems... out of place to me? What do you guys think? Also, most things capable of altering enemy firing timings (like the Narcotics Drone) could do with a toning-down. They pretty much ALL turn bosses/fearsomes into sad, easy things regardless of difficulty. There's a new module that was doing something like this, I forget the name. I should have written this down.
I really didn't want to get too deep into the elemental damage stuff, so it's meant to be pretty simple. Mainly just some Dot and an associated effect. Ice just slows a bit, Fire burns you a bit, Acid does Dot and increased weakness to further attacks, and Ion stuns a bit. I can remove it if necessary, though, but most of this stuff is already in the base game -- the effects like time dilation, I mean.
Evaporator enemy: room cleared, this guy was still hanging around. No idea why. Happened more than once.
Yeah, I think I'm just going to have to lose the flies through walls attribute on this enemy. It's a shame, but I've tried various solutions so far.
Skeleton Key: Not opening lock blocks. Probably an oversight instead of a bug.
Yeah, just an oversight.