Feedback

[Atlar]

So, after 29h I just beat Terminus on normal and I want to give you some feedback for the game:
I was thrilled when I saw that you guys made a roguelite shmup, instantly bought it.  The game really got me hooked from the start, couldn't stop playing. Took me like 10 runs to do it and it felt genuinely glorious when I first beat the Warden. Afterwards things became a bit less intense, can't say I liked the concept of having to beat him several times before moving on... once you manage to beat him you know what you're doing imo. Did die on my next run to overconfidence but the next 3 runs I streaked, including Terminus. Terminus itself was a bit of a disappointment, the different rooms and the patterns are cool, but he barely managed to scratch me cause he died very quickly.

Really like the game, though its still a bit rough around the edges. Here are my suggestions for refining the gameplay:
- remove the "shield energy weapon" or make it cost more energy/use, its just op and boring
- remove time warp or make it appear way less frequently, again op and boring
- remove the 3 win requirement for 7 floor runs, boring
- Terminus needs more HP, went down way too fast imo
- challenges on floor entry are mostly unreasonable and therefore useless, rewards are weak aswell. I'd suggest something like "Don't use your energy weapon on this floor: gain 50 max. energy." "Never fall below (floor level)*4 hp: gain 6 max. hp" "Achieve 33%+ accuracy: gain 20% primary range" "Beat the boss in less than 10 min: restart the floor" (last one replacing time warp)
- it’s impossible to take the middle shop item without harming the shopkeeper if he’s standing above the items (without rebinding the keys). simple solution: make him always stand below the items. better: position him in a small extra room
- sacrifice item "gain energy after killing enemies" is equal or better than the other shop items, cost should be increased to 5+
- sacrifice shops on later levels are empty. I guess this is intentional cause of increased player hp but it would be better if they just don’t appear anymore. Alternatively the hp cost could be increased with floor depth or player level or the cost could be a percentage of the players hp instead of fixed numbers
- add atleast a small text after beating the final boss concluding the story and rewarding the player

Some things i would like to see in the future, possibly as a dlc:
- other modes like a boss rush or endless game
- more (sacrifice) shop items and weapons
- more variety in early bosses
- more music tracks
- difficulty connected steam achievements

Minor Bug:
"Perfected" the boss Periphery but there is no steam achievement.

Thats alot of suggestions but the core gameplay remains really nice, thanks for making a(nother) great game!
Now on to hard mode...

[Misery]

Hey there, thanks for the feedback!  I'll do as I usually do and give a few specific responses here...

For Terminus itself, what you ran into is the game's biggest issue right now:  Balance issues are causing the difficulty progression to be effectively backwards!  Ignoring it's two guardians, Terminus itself has about 8400 HP... that's a pretty big amount in this game.  And each of it's guardians has about 3500-4000 on it's own.  That's a lot to chew through.  But player power/damage progression is all sorts of messed up right now, so that often, by the time you get to him, you're WAY too powerful for what you're supposed to be at that point in the game.

It's not just that boss, people have had it start to happen as early as floor 3/4, so they end up flattening those bosses and the Warden as well (and the Warden has a bit over 10000 HP...).   

That's been one of the biggest concerns, that whole issue, and we've got an upcoming patch that'll finally fix that; I've been testing it a lot recently and I have to say, it works soooooo much better now.  PTarth, one of the Freaking Volunteers working on this, did all sorts of crazy math stuff and did awesome huge changes.   I assume there were arcane rituals or something involved.

Other than that, I've been fixing up tons of the game's broken rooms (it has many), so the balance change, and the room fixes, are coming in a big patch probably before the end of the month here.  We still need to test more, but I personally think it's looking really good.   And then there's other stuff being worked on behind the scenes that I'll not speak of for now.


Now, as to some of your other points:

Time Warp:  Yeah, I know, damn thing is everywhere.  I've set it so that it actually only appears in the secret room, much like the item from Isaac that it mimics.  It's powerful as heck, it shouldn't be appearing every blasted time... 

Energy Shield:  I forget what this does.   I think, in our development version, this may have already gotten changed though.  I *think*.  I could be wrong.  One of the others can throw a virtual chair at me if I've gotten that wrong.

3 win requirement:  That bit is staying, I think. 

Floor challenges:  You know, I kinda agree with you on these.  I like the idea of these in concept... but I don't feel they were really executed right.  But, not sure what to DO about them.  Something is likely to get altered there, but I've no idea what.  Even just something like "Don't use missiles this floor" is often not worth it, because by not using missiles, you're probably missing out on health shards, money, items, secret rooms... the benefits of using them far outweighs the rewards for not.   Among other issues.

Middle shop item:  Wait, what?  I... what?   I've never seen this.  Is the default key binding for "grab things" also defaulting to an attack key?   That shouldn't be the case.  Or am I reading this wrong?

Sacrifice shops empty:   Actually this is what happens when it's item pool runs out, heh.   I'm going to stick some more things in there, get some variety in that room.

Story text:  Yes, this is missing, isn't it...  call it a casualty of development deadlines.  We're going to get more story stuff in there.  I'm not sure WHEN, but it'll happen.


For your suggestions...

Boss rush:  Yes, I want to see that too.   One thing though, if you want to just test your skill against a particular boss, EVERY boss room can be found in that "mods" button in the bottom right of the screen.  There's tons of different rooms used for testing in there, and that includes a room for each individual boss; you can pick one, select your difficulty, and in you go.   You'll start with the White Gloss mech, and 5 missiles.   If you want to see what a boss like Terminus does when you ARENT all-powerful.... that's a good way to see it, heh.

More sacrifice shop items:  Yep, that's coming!  We've got a pile of item pool changes coming, some of that is going to come along with the big balance change.

More early bosses:  Oh yes, I can do this one.

More music:  Out of our hands, sadly. 

Difficulty connected steam achievements:  Ah, this one is a good idea, I'm kinda surprised it isn't already like that.  Even if they are added though, I *can* say that achievements for Misery difficulty will never exist (because I wont let them...).  That difficulty isn't actually ready to go yet... what's there right now is a placeholder... but it's going to be hard enough that most players likely will die on the first floor.  Next to nobody will actually beat the game on that mode.  That mode will go just a bit overboard with challenge so I'm not going to force players that like to 100% games to go through that nightmare to get all the achievements.    But for Hard mode and below?  Sounds like a good idea to me.


Periphery achievement bug:  UGH.  I swear, it's always something.  At least it's not the Warden again, I'm tired of fixing that guy.  I'll let one of the others know about this specific bug though.


Anyway, so that's that! 

Good luck with Hard mode, by the way, heh.   Just so you know:  Hard mode is the one that's hit really heavily by the broken rooms right now.  If you play Hard and the difficulty seems to just go absolutely bonkers, well... that's why.  Broken rooms aren't so bad on Normal.  But they're game-wrecking on Hard.  But I've fixed TONS of them and that fix will come along with that big patch.

[Logorouge]

Story text:  Yes, this is missing, isn't it...  call it a casualty of development deadlines.  We're going to get more story stuff in there.  I'm not sure WHEN, but it'll happen.

If anyone is curious, the images for the bosses victory screens are actually included in the game's files under the names "FallenTerminus" and "FallenWarden". Too bad time ran out to add them ingame, as those are pretty neat. (The hidden treasures you can find while modding. )

[Draco18s]

The shopkeeper and middle items aren't the problem.

You can absolutely take the middle item with out engaging the shopkeeper: he goes into attack mode if you walk onto him.  So to get the middle item, just walk around.

[Misery]

Hmm, I was watching WindlessZephyr's stream earlier; he did walk into the Shopkeeper once, took shield damage, but the shopkeeper did not go berserk, just stood there.

[Draco18s]

Odd, because I had one go berzerk where I did nothing but walk over him,  I bought the item I wanted and left the room (as I didn't want to kill that shop owner, IIRC it was the robot shop).

[ptarth]

There are items that give the player contact damage, perhaps that was it?

[Misery]

There's contact damage items for the player?

....why would those even exist?

Don't look at me, I didn't balance this thing. Talk to that Misery guy. >D

[Logorouge]

Since the buy button is completely separated from the attack buttons and I regularly run into the shopkeeper without consequence (apart from losing a shield), it had to be related to some counter-attack items.

[Pepisolo]

Energy Shield:  I forget what this does.   I think, in our development version, this may have already gotten changed though.  I *think*.  I could be wrong.  One of the others can throw a virtual chair at me if I've gotten that wrong.

This should be the same as in the development version. I can increase the amount of energy that is taken when you get hit, though, for the next build.

Thanks for the feedback, yeah as Misery says, a few of the problems that you mention are going to be fixed for the next build. The end game balance problem being the major one. Other stuff like the challenges are also going to be looked at, at some point.

[Mánagarmr]

Since the buy button is completely separated from the attack buttons and I regularly run into the shopkeeper without consequence (apart from losing a shield), it had to be related to some counter-attack items.

There's two items off the top of my head that will cause that. The cryofreeze module (aoe damage) and the burst fire or whatever it's called (aoe fire damage).

[Atlar]

@Misery:
Heya, thanks for the in depth reply. Great to hear about the upcoming changes, really looking forward to that!

Concerning the shopkeeper: I play with an xbox 360 controller. Standard setting for the y,b,a,x buttons is to shoot straight up, right, down, left. y is also bound to grab items. Shopkeepers always stand above or below the middle item, so if he stands above and i want to grab the middle item... but of course it makes no sense to reposition him because of that (silly me). The standard setting for "grab item" should simply be rebound to another key, like the stick buttons.

Btw, thanks for pointing me to the test chamber, really useful feature.

@Pepisolo:
What I was refererring to is the energy weapon which spawns a bullet blocking shield on use. Imo this one is way too strong and should cost more energy to use.
I think you are talking about the module which slowly depleats energy while making shots take energy instead of hp? That one did not seem op to me.


o/

[Pepisolo]

What I was refererring to is the energy weapon which spawns a bullet blocking shield on use. Imo this one is way too strong and should cost more energy to use.
I think you are talking about the module which slowly depleats energy while making shots take energy instead of hp? That one did not seem op to me.

Oh, right. The combat shield. Yeah, I can tweak this to use more energy then. Thanks!

[Draco18s]

Concerning the shopkeeper: I play with an xbox 360 controller. Standard setting for the y,b,a,x buttons is to shoot straight up, right, down, left. y is also bound to grab items. Shopkeepers always stand above or below the middle item, so if he stands above and i want to grab the middle item... but of course it makes no sense to reposition him because of that (silly me). The standard setting for "grab item" should simply be rebound to another key, like the stick buttons.

Oooh, controllery support button things.  That makes more sense now.

(Could always be worse: Dungeon Defender 2's controller scheme right now has Inspect, Equip, and Jump all bound to the same button and you can't split them. We've been bitching about it for months).

[Misery]

(Could always be worse: Dungeon Defender 2's controller scheme right now has Inspect, Equip, and Jump all bound to the same button and you can't split them. We've been bitching about it for months).

.....what kind of useless dimwit thinks THAT is a good idea?

I'm never going to understand this trend, in some games, of NOT allowing the player to rebind controls.   Usually for me that's an instant no-buy.   Just hate dealing with it.