Items, locked chests, etc

[Logorouge]

Ah, so it's not so much the DOT but the rounding up that made the early floors easier than I expected. Interesting.

Floor 6-7 tend to have so many in-your-face high HP enemies for each room, making it a less than ideal environment for the Maw to do its thing. But with the right build, I believe it could absolutely hold its own to the end. In my run, I didn't have that many drones and my attack speed wasn't as ludicrous as usual, so a different loadout would probably have had an easier time.

Anyway, I'm really happy how things turned out and will definitely have lots of fun doing runs with the new Maw. So thanks again.
Now, time to check that new thread. :)

[Logorouge]

It's been a while, so here's a bunch of small suggestions:


-Detonating Rose: Mine-style secondary. I think removing friendly fire from this one would make it a much more interesting option. It's definitely fun to use otherwise.

-Sabotage Circuit vs Rocket Man: Getting damaged by that circuit doesn't break the conditional effect of Rocket Man. I think it should.

-Open ALL containers / collect ALL health shard challenges: The wording should include "and explore all rooms", because you need to in order to complete the challenges, regardless of if the remaining rooms have a container/health shard or not.

-ZMC_DiamondMines: A room with a bunch of floating mines and one weak enemy. The battle ends in 2-3 seconds. That's way too short. There's enough space for 2-3 small enemies, which would make the player actually move around that sea of floating mines for a bit before the room is cleared. I think that would give a more interesting experience.

-Reath_Waves: That room is a gravity well nightmare. Removing some of them in an alternating fashion would allow the player to lure problematic enemies toward a gravitational opening while still allowing all the gravity-related hijinks.

-END_FreeMissilesWithSpawner: Nice room that teach you about missiles and spawners. Unfortunately, all the rewards (4 missiles) are in the outer part of the room, so you don't have any reason to bother reaching the center. If some of the missiles were moved to the center, it would be a nice reason (use 1 missile, gain 3) to actually beat the room instead of just skipping it entirely most of the time.

-Paragon: I'm more looking for opinions here. Is it just me or is Paragon's hitbox kinda weird considering his appearance? I never noticed before because he would die too fast, but while fighting him at low power lately, I was surprised to see so many of my shots go right through him.

-Old orbital weapons: Those didn't really work with gamepads and got removed. Could they make a comeback if they use a fixed range instead of the at-cursor aiming? Or is their wall ignoring property too problematic regardless of their range?

-New enemy: Is there plans to include energy munching enemies in the game, or were those deemed too annoying?


The end... for now!

[Pepisolo]

-Detonating Rose: Mine-style secondary. I think removing friendly fire from this one would make it a much more interesting option. It's definitely fun to use otherwise.
-Open ALL containers / collect ALL health shard challenges: The wording should include "and explore all rooms", because you need to in order to complete the challenges, regardless of if the remaining rooms have a container/health shard or not.
-Paragon: I'm more looking for opinions here. Is it just me or is Paragon's hitbox kinda weird considering his appearance? I never noticed before because he would die too fast, but while fighting him at low power lately, I was surprised to see so many of my shots go right through him.

I just put some fixes in for these, thanks. Yeah, good spot on Paragon, the hitbox was way too small. I'll leave the rooms for Misery to take a look at as he has a better handle on enemy placements and stuff.

-Sabotage Circuit vs Rocket Man: Getting damaged by that circuit doesn't break the conditional effect of Rocket Man. I think it should.

I'll have to look into this one.

-Old orbital weapons: Those didn't really work with gamepads and got removed. Could they make a comeback if they use a fixed range instead of the at-cursor aiming? Or is their wall ignoring property too problematic regardless of their range?

These could make a comeback but would need an overhaul. The last idea we had was to convert them more into timed airstrikes. So, for example, you place a marker and then a few seconds later a series of explosions would occur.

-New enemy: Is there plans to include energy munching enemies in the game, or were those deemed too annoying?

I don't think we've really looked into this type of enemy. Enemes that drain your energy you mean? Sounds like a decent idea to me.

[Misery]

-ZMC_DiamondMines: A room with a bunch of floating mines and one weak enemy. The battle ends in 2-3 seconds. That's way too short. There's enough space for 2-3 small enemies, which would make the player actually move around that sea of floating mines for a bit before the room is cleared. I think that would give a more interesting experience.

-Reath_Waves: That room is a gravity well nightmare. Removing some of them in an alternating fashion would allow the player to lure problematic enemies toward a gravitational opening while still allowing all the gravity-related hijinks.

-END_FreeMissilesWithSpawner: Nice room that teach you about missiles and spawners. Unfortunately, all the rewards (4 missiles) are in the outer part of the room, so you don't have any reason to bother reaching the center. If some of the missiles were moved to the center, it would be a nice reason (use 1 missile, gain 3) to actually beat the room instead of just skipping it entirely most of the time.

I like these ideas, so I'm going to make these changes.

Speaking of rooms, I might add a bunch of new ones myself here for an upcoming update; I'd meant to make a bunch more to go along with the Humble update but didn't really have time to do that.

[Logorouge]

-New enemy: Is there plans to include energy munching enemies in the game, or were those deemed too annoying?

I don't think we've really looked into this type of enemy. Enemes that drain your energy you mean? Sounds like a decent idea to me.

Yup, that's what I was thinking. Some kind of energy leech enemies would offer a very different kind of threat.

I'm glad you guys liked the suggestions.

[Misery]

Well, made the room changes.  If you find any more screwball gravity well rooms in particular, let me know.

On a side note, I've totally revamped the Guard Flea's attack pattern.  The super-common enemy that has very low range and barely moves but stops your shots.  The third-tier one was proving problematic when encountered with slow-firing weapons (had the flare gun, and they were nearly unkillable, had to use missiles every time, which isn't the first time I've run into that sort of thing), so.... I gave them all a new set of patterns.  This also makes them a lot harder now (which also gives them more purpose).   They can still block your shots, they just have a totally new way of doing that now that wont make them take a million years to get at with slow guns.  The third-tier one is particularly unpleasant.

[Misery]

Okay, this'll be more of an update than I thought.

I've got entirely new enemy categories active here; they have been in the game for awhile now (one of the others added them) but I never got around to doing stuff with them.  Now, I have.  A variety of new ships will come with this, and Anklebiters are making their return.

The new categories are:

Popcorn:  Very weak foes, very little health, small attacks.  They are threatening only in large groups.  No other enemy type in the game appears in large groups, because that'd be going too far...

Defensive:  Things very good at guarding specific areas.   When you deal with one, you often have to have a high focus on them; getting rid of other nearby things beforehand is a very good idea.  They will have placement only in appropriate areas.  Anklebiters are in this group.

Maze:  Designed for use in thin or tangled corridors.  A lot of enemies that have been around for awhile are actually very bad for this.

All three of those are available in the level editor, have been for awhile now, they just didn't do anything yet since there were no enemies of those types.

Also, some more rooms.

[Pepisolo]

Sounds awesome! Return of the Anklebiter, yay!

[Logorouge]

Question of the day: Are the dps switcheroo items (x2 firerate+half power. or vice-versa) a bit too extreme in their effects?

I think they tend to make it a bit too easy/simple to reach extreme values for either firerate or power. A mere x1.5 would still be a pretty major shift in the firerate/power balance without instantly going to superspeed/superpower.

But on the other hand, would that become irrelevant once the power-related perks get re-balanced? I don't know. I'd like to hear what you guys think.

[Pepisolo]

Question of the day: Are the dps switcheroo items (x2 firerate+half power. or vice-versa) a bit too extreme in their effects?

I think they tend to make it a bit too easy/simple to reach extreme values for either firerate or power. A mere x1.5 would still be a pretty major shift in the firerate/power balance without instantly going to superspeed/superpower.

But on the other hand, would that become irrelevant once the power-related perks get re-balanced? I don't know. I'd like to hear what you guys think.

Could be a bit too extreme, yeah. Fire rate in particular seems to cap at a certain point. Or maybe the engine can't handle anything beyond a certain fire rate. Reducing the boost amount would leave a bit more room to stack other fire rate boosting items with it rather than instantly just getting superspeed. I'm not sure how the perk overhaul and rebalance would affect this, since it's still in the early stages at the moment.

[Logorouge]

Two things I wanted to mention without cluttering the other thread:

-Since a perk overhaul is coming, could the XP curve for levelups be made smoother?

Currently, at higher levels the XP requirements suddenly spike to the heavens, to the point where levels 18+ might as well not exist (and making XP boost items/perks almost pointless, since you end up being stopped by the same wall as everyone else). If there's an incoming floor 8-9-10 with exponential XP gains, then the XP curve might be fine the way it is. If not, then here's my suggestion for a smoother XP curve:



Vanilla are the normal values for levelups, modified are the smoother version and the % are just the accelerated models I experimented with for my roulette mech.


-Mech menu order: I noticed that for some reason, many new players assume the upper-left mech is the recommended one to start with for your first run. Previously that was White Gloss which, although a bit dull for a first choice (in my opinion), was still a nice way to get used to the game. But now, the Humble mech has taken that spot. I honestly think his alternate ammo system and lack of starting shield makes him a very poor choice for a first timer.

My suggestion would be to move a more appropriate mech to that spot, that would allow new players that happen to choose it to have a smoother (the word of the day apparently) first run experience with the game. I think Flametank could fill that role nicely, with his 2 starting shields and wide-spread flamethrower. Green Envy might also work, since his special abilities are pretty easy to understand and don't really require any specific playstyle. But any mech with a starting shield would be an improvement here I think.

Thoughts?

[Pepisolo]

Since a perk overhaul is coming, could the XP curve for levelups be made smoother?

Yeah, I hadn't actually thought about the curve, yet, heh. I think we might need to trim the levels to the amount of perks we can fill the tree with. Not sure how to handle that super high level end game. Do we just have a level 16 cap for example, or allow the player to keep pushing up, but then we'd have to reuse perks a lot.

-Mech menu order: I noticed that for some reason, many new players assume the upper-left mech is the recommended one to start with for your first run. Previously that was White Gloss which, although a bit dull for a first choice (in my opinion), was still a nice way to get used to the game. But now, the Humble mech has taken that spot. I honestly think his alternate ammo system and lack of starting shield makes him a very poor choice for a first timer.

Good point, it made sense to have the Humble Mech first during the promotion, I guess (although that actually wasn't intentional!),  but now moving it further down seems more appropriate.

[Logorouge]

Yeah, I hadn't actually thought about the curve, yet, heh. I think we might need to trim the levels to the amount of perks we can fill the tree with. Not sure how to handle that super high level end game. Do we just have a level 16 cap for example, or allow the player to keep pushing up, but then we'd have to reuse perks a lot.

Personally, I would much rather see repeats and variants of previous perks than hitting a level cap and see all future XP wasted into nothingness, with no more progression possible.

I don't think you need to add too many perks to populate the upper tree. With the current floors, even if you used a smoother XP curve a player won't reach that high a level. The way I see it, you have maybe 3 standard levelups (lv15+)that could benefit from having a special perk (or 2 for extra variety) to spice things up for all mechs (be it new or just a repeat/variant). If you add 2 or 3 mech specific perks along the way too (every 5 levels or something), things will get very interesting indeed. Levels higher than that would only need to be freshen up after the addition of deeper floors or branches, which would probably be part of an expansion anyway.

[Misery]

I would say that while having a level cap isn't a bad idea, it probably shouldn't be the case.  The reason is that if the player wants to dump a big pile of money into the XP machines in shops, which I have seen people do in videos and which I sometimes do myself, it should end up being possible for them to go a bit further with the perks than usual.  In the end it's just another way to use money to power-up, so it's not any more broken than just buying items.

[ptarth]

• A formula representation of the level up would make parsing that easier ;p
• Xp per level was set before my time
• I think experience values do differ for some mechs, but the point remains unchanged.
• Soft level cap has my vote.
• Hitting 15 on level 7 without xp items seems reasonable to me.
• Current xp model ends up with players around 13 after 7 floors.
• Players gain 3 levels on the first floor, and roughly 2 levels per floor after that. About a 50% reduction to require experienced after level 10 should probably work out. So around 1500 xp per level.
• I could see players with 3+ experience items making it to level 20.