New Balance

[Logorouge]

I've done a couple of runs with the new balance since yesterday and I have to say it is a pleasure to play. Before this update, the difficulty progression was like jumping off the side a cliff and if you survived the fall, you won. You'll just have to drag yourself to the end after that. But now, the progression is more akin to scaling a hill or a small mountain that gets increasingly steeper as you go on. Much more natural and enjoyable in my opinion.

But there's a few things I noticed and wanted to share/discuss here.

-Sacrifice rooms: Those are empty on later floors because the item pool runs out. It was recently discussed that more items would simply be added to the pool so it doesn't run out. But until those new items are ready, could the sacrifice rooms be limited to 2 items per room so the pool can provide for the later floors too? As a bonus, that might make that sacrifice challenge reasonable to complete now.

-Paragon mini-boss: Just before performing his final freakout attack, could Paragon turn toward the player so we have to dodge that last attack?

-Terminus: Jaywalker can be used to cheese the fight in a major way. Basically, you step out of the teleporter, activate the boss, step back behind the one way arrow with Jaywalker and shoot at the boss with no risk of retaliation.

-Out to Lunch: That's the levelup perk that prevents mini-boss/condemned from spawning 10% of the time. I don't really understand why you would want to skip those, but if you sacrifice a high level perk for it, shouldn't it at least be more reliable than 10%? Maybe I'm missing something here.

-OP items: On a recent run, I acquired the Turbo Blaster (powerful hyperspeed minigun), which resulted in enemies melting in record time. It did cost 90 credits, but it still felt quite over the top for something I can find as soon as the 4th floor (3rd with the looter perk). But things got crazier when I picked up the Missile Man item (infinite missiles until hit). I was using the green mech, so in other words: infinite large area bullet cancellation. Game Over. I rushed the last two floors and proceeded to melt the defenseless Terminus. I don't know what, but that infinite missile item needs an additional restriction on it. Infinite bullet cancellation is just way too ridiculous.

-Blue mech: The energy bonus/cost are multiplied by 2 on this mech, but item descriptions don't take that into account. It's fine when you're used to it, but for new players that's just unnecessary confusion. Could the descriptions be altered based on if Blue is used?

-Teleporter pads: Could powerless teleporter pads that activate only on room clear be added in the game? That would allow additional shortcuts to be added to lengthy/tricky rooms and reduce the tedium of backtracking without removing the intended initial challenge/puzzle.

-Random button for mech selection: Could that be considered for a future feature? I'd use it, that's for sure.


Ah geez, that was supposed to be a short post... But yeah, great job on the new balance. It's so much fun.

[Pepisolo]

-Sacrifice rooms: Those are empty on later floors because the item pool runs out. It was recently discussed that more items would simply be added to the pool so it doesn't run out. But until those new items are ready, could the sacrifice rooms be limited to 2 items per room so the pool can provide for the later floors too? As a bonus, that might make that sacrifice challenge reasonable to complete now.

Changing to 2 per room might be an option, yeah. Any thoughts guys?

Paragon mini-boss: Just before performing his final freakout attack, could Paragon turn toward the player so we have to dodge that last attack?

I might actually be tweaking this boss a fair bit, which will probably include changes to the ending attack.

-Out to Lunch: That's the levelup perk that prevents mini-boss/condemned from spawning 10% of the time. I don't really understand why you would want to skip those, but if you sacrifice a high level perk for it, shouldn't it at least be more reliable than 10%? Maybe I'm missing something here.

Yeah, this perk is terrible. I thought I'd actually removed this perk from the game for the latest build. Did you see this perk on a recent run?

-Blue mech: The energy bonus/cost are multiplied by 2 on this mech, but item descriptions don't take that into account. It's fine when you're used to it, but for new players that's just unnecessary confusion. Could the descriptions be altered based on if Blue is used?

Energy costs are increased, too? I didn't know this!

-Teleporter pads: Could powerless teleporter pads that activate only on room clear be added in the game? That would allow additional shortcuts to be added to lengthy/tricky rooms and reduce the tedium of backtracking without removing the intended initial challenge/puzzle.

-Random button for mech selection: Could that be considered for a future feature? I'd use it, that's for sure.

These sound possible, but are things that are pretty Keithy, rather than Freaking Volunteery, and at the moment Chris and Keith are super busy with their respective projects, so it's possible, but maybe not for a while.

[Misery]

Jaywalker?  What the heck is Jaywalker?

Sacrifice rooms:  Yeah, I'm never sure about those.  The problem of course is either actually making more items to put in there, or deciding on some already-existing items to put in there; either has problems.  I'm not against having two pedestals for now though.

Out to Lunch:  The main reason for the player to take this is to avoid potentially dangerous rooms.  As minibosses don't actually GIVE you anything when beaten and Condemned rooms are rare, there's usually no real pentalty to taking this.

Missile thing:  Yeah, that is a bit crazy... hmm.  I don't have any ideas on what to do about it.

[Pepisolo]

Out to Lunch:  The main reason for the player to take this is to avoid potentially dangerous rooms.  As minibosses don't actually GIVE you anything when beaten and Condemned rooms are rare, there's usually no real pentalty to taking this.

I believe that Minibosses do give you a fair bit of XP, though, so really you're mostly going to want to clear them rather than skip them I think.

[Logorouge]

Some precisions:

Jaywalker: Forgot to include the description in the OP. Basically, this incredibility gives you free movement over one-way arrows and transparent blocks.

Terminus vs Jaywalker: Although incredibilities are usually ignored for balance purpose, I still wanted to mention this abuse because I believe a minor room change could nullify it by removing the direct line of fire from the teleport to the boss.

Out-to-Lunch: It is true that I didn't see it in the levelup perks recently. My missile mech doesn't have it in his selection to begin with and I didn't really notice that it didn't show up for the other mechs. (It was the fourth perk for that level, so it only showed up occasionally). My bad.

Blue mech energy cost: Just to be clear, by x2 bonus/cost I meant for items like "gain +1 health for -5 energy" will do -10 instead. Energy weapons still drain the same amount of energy.

[windlesszephyr]

With regard to the infinite missiles thing, the best way in my eyes to fix that is to reduce the blast radius of Green Envy's missiles. Finding that perk with Green Envy negates pretty much every enemy in the game except for contact damage ones, and once you're powerful enough to take down Bullrushes and whatnot super quickly, everything becomes a joke.

[Logorouge]

With regard to the infinite missiles thing, the best way in my eyes to fix that is to reduce the blast radius of Green Envy's missiles.

I don't think that would help much. I did pretty much the same thing again with the magnetic mech, rushing with infinite missiles through floors 5-6-7 like it was nothing. If anything, the magnetic missiles made it even more OP than Green Envy.

[Misery]

Indeed, the blast radius bit wouldn't matter.

It can be done by the White Gloss just as easily.

[ptarth]

I believe that post-clear teleporters are already in the game.

[Draco18s]

I believe that post-clear teleporters are already in the game.

There's not a ton of them, though.  They're fairly rare.

[Logorouge]

I believe that post-clear teleporters are already in the game.

Could I add them to existing rooms and submit those changes for inclusion if deemed reasonable?

[Pepisolo]

I believe that post-clear teleporters are already in the game.

Could I add them to existing rooms and submit those changes for inclusion if deemed reasonable?

Yep, sounds good to me, if these post clear teleporters are actually in the game. I haven't done any room design, so I'm not sure. I just did a quick check of the map editor and didn't seem to see these teleporters, but it's super late and I should be sleeping, heh.

[Logorouge]

I just did a quick check of the map editor and didn't seem to see these teleporters, but it's super late and I should be sleeping, heh.

Same here, didn't see them. Maybe they're so rare that they weren't included in the editor by mistake. But if someone knows which character the post-clear teleporters use, I could just modify the rooms manually instead.

[Misery]

Never seen any of these teleporters; pretty sure they don't exist.  After so much time in the editor I'd have spotted them by now.  Chances are the editor would give errors if it tried to save/load something with a tile that isn't in the list (and that isn't in the list).   And certainly never seen one in-game.   Just the usual ones.

[Atlar]

+1 for post clear teleporter idea. Right now there are only a few rooms with teleporters that take you from one entry to the other, but those are there from the start.
Actually I would really like to see unlimited teleporting between cleared rooms. Yes, in that case you would not be forced to traverse trap rooms multiple times, which was raised as counter argument in another thread. But what good does that for the gameplay?
In the beginning backtracking did not bother me too much, but at 43h gametime its becoming increasingly annoying.

-Blue mech: The energy bonus/cost are multiplied by 2 on this mech, but item descriptions don't take that into account. It's fine when you're used to it, but for new players that's just unnecessary confusion. Could the descriptions be altered based on if Blue is used?

Is this intended? Blue Mech gets 2xenergy from items, bonus or malus. So a -10 energy item will cost 20 max energy. A +80 energy item will add 160 max energy (conductive hull).