New player feedback!

[Monkooky]

So I just picked up Starward Rogue, and it may be consuming my life a little bit.
Gonna blab a bit about my first impressions.

GOOD STUFF:
Ok so AVWW had this thing where enemies had very distinctive behaviors, but it didn't matter because you could cheese the shit out of them
Bionic Dues had this thing where enemies had very distinctive behaviors, but it didn't matter because you could kill them before they ever got in range (On the hardest difficulty to boot)

Starward Rogue? Things worked. Enemies have very distinctive behaviors, and if you ignore that you are boned.
You need to adapt strategically to what enemies are in play. Every little movement is predicated by what precisely is shooting at you.
What you focus, how to use consumables, all incredibly meaningful decisions.
It is excellent.

Beyond that, core gameplay is quite fun. The controls are perfectly functional, the bullet dodging is intense, the grand strategy decisions are meaningful. Bosses are difficult, interesting, and fair. This is as good of a core game as Binding of Isaac or Nuclear Throne, but with much more interesting enemies.

Thank you for making this game.
But enough gushing, on to the inevitable kvetch.

THE MEDIOCRE:
Arrite so none of the following is actually objectively bad, just things that I personally found distasteful.
The "bonus" things felt very RNG to me. Some of them were quite simple to do (Use no consumables) and some nigh impossible (take no hits.)
Completing the floor 2 bonus is a HUGE swing, and can easily make or break a run- having 4 keycards instead of 1 on floor 3 lets you get much more loot, and frequently makes it easier to complete the following bonuses.

The "keep until X" buffs also feel like a strange power swing- particularly infinite missiles and PARTICULARLY if you have explododendron.
The sudden ramp in power when you get it and the sudden loss of power when you get hit are both jarring.

A lot of items are really shitty. Skeleton key isn't worth picking up like ever (maybe floor 1? MAYBE?), the +1 health/room thing is pretty bad, I've regretted the +6health -1shield every time I picked it up (barring redshift), +33% size/damage wouldn't really be worth even WITHOUT the health cost. 


THE MILDLY IRRITATING:
I don't know where my hitbox is.
I think homing shots can miss if they're moving too fast.
I'd like to be able to see whether a room has credits, even if there is a craptacular consumable in that room. Maybe display the available pickups in a cycle?


THE DOWNRIGHT BROKEN:
Did you know that the debris from the blue 2x2 destructible blocks count as enemies?
Did you know that the humble mech can shoot these little rocks with missiles to get ~12 credits/missile?

Also, I instabuy the double damage crits whenever I see it. You get a 1+2*critchance damage multiplier- multiplicative with everything else in the game. That can easily be 1.6 times damage by the end of the game- having it makes everything MUCH easier.


THE AWFUL:
Blaze cannons on hard.
WHY. 

[Logorouge]

Always nice to see new players get into the game. 
I need sleep badly, so I'll just comment on two things:

I don't know where my hitbox is.

If you want to know the exact limits of your hitbox using a more visual method, use the F7 key.

Blaze cannons on hard.
WHY.

You are gonna make a certain someone very happy with this comment.

[Misery]

Hi there!

Glad you like the game. It's come a long way since release, and I think it's at it's best so far right now.  Good time for any new players to be getting into it.

I'm gonna give some very specific responses, starting with my favorite part:

THE AWFUL:
Blaze cannons on hard.
WHY. 

Ah, so you met THOSE guys! 

My job in all of this is to make the game kill you.   Er... I mean... balance the difficulty and make bullet hell stuff and.... make the game kill you, let's just go with that.  Blaze Cannons might be my crowning achievement of annoying here.  What you say there is basically what everyone says, sooner or later.  They're the "Goddamn Flying Medusa Heads" of the game.

The current version of the game was actually supposed to contain something called an Inferno Cannon.  Worse than the Blaze Cannons.  The only reason it does not is.... because I forgot to put it in.  Expect it probably with the next update, even if it's a minor one.  Heh.

I've toyed with the idea of making a boss version of the Blaze Cannons.  I have not done so.  You're welcome.

Bionic Dues had this thing where enemies had very distinctive behaviors, but it didn't matter because you could kill them before they ever got in range (On the hardest difficulty to boot)

I'd be really interested, actually, to know what sorts of strategies you used to cause this to happen. Big fan of that game, myself.  Does this mean you completed Misery difficulty?  I didn't know if anyone would do that.  Maybe more people might have.... but sadly that game just didn't sell well.  I wish it had, I'd love for Arcen to be in position to make an expansion for it!

Beyond that, core gameplay is quite fun. The controls are perfectly functional, the bullet dodging is intense, the grand strategy decisions are meaningful. Bosses are difficult, interesting, and fair. This is as good of a core game as Binding of Isaac or Nuclear Throne, but with much more interesting enemies.

Wow, I think everyone involved in this would agree that this is quite the compliment here about the game overall.  Definitely appreciated.

Though as an absolute fanboy of Isaac I always have trouble with the idea that any game in this genre could possibly be better than that.  Easily one of my all-time favorites, that.  I cant wait for it's big update later in the year.

The "bonus" things felt very RNG to me. Some of them were quite simple to do (Use no consumables) and some nigh impossible (take no hits.)

Yyyyyup.   Those were a concept from really early on in development that sounded like such an amazing idea at the time, but they didn't evolve with the rest of the game as development continued and things kept changing until release.  And then they haven't been touched since then.  They're a mess!     

At some point, they need to be changed up.  Heck if I know how to do that.  But I bet the others might have some ideas.

The "keep until X" buffs also feel like a strange power swing- particularly infinite missiles and PARTICULARLY if you have explododendron.

 

Yeah, I can agree with that.  Infinite missiles may need to be toned down... somehow.  Are you seeing these things too often?   They're supposed to be quite rare.  If they're not, that needs to be fixed.

A lot of items are really shitty.

To a pretty high degree, a lot of these are very... subjective.   That skeleton key, for instance.  It's one that I'll frequently pick up, when given the chance.   Why?  Simple:  Locked chests.  It means I can open *all* of them, giving me very frequent access to consumables.  And consumables got pretty darned strong in this version of the game.  But this is definitely dependant on someone's playstyle.  Quite a number of items in the game are, really.   I cant think of many items at all that seem genuinely bad to me.   Except that size-increase one.  Bad idea, that.

Some items that may seem bad at first though may be worth more experimentation with later on.  At least I think so, anyway.

I don't know where my hitbox is.

Typically it's right in the center of your mech's head.  It's very small.  Though as Logorouge says, you can hit F7 to see the hitboxes of absolutely everything.

There are a few things with wonky hitboxes though, you'll figure out which those are over time. 

Did you know that the debris from the blue 2x2 destructible blocks count as enemies?
Did you know that the humble mech can shoot these little rocks with missiles to get ~12 credits/missile?

.....ugh!   

Good catch there.  I don't think anyone spotted that at all.  That's a NASTY bug, that is.  Talk about unbalanced... that needs to get fixed ASAP. 

Also, I instabuy the double damage crits whenever I see it. You get a 1+2*critchance damage multiplier- multiplicative with everything else in the game. That can easily be 1.6 times damage by the end of the game- having it makes everything MUCH easier.

Huh.  Maybe this one is a bit too strong?  I'm not really sure... it's not one I ended up using all that much.  I don't do item creation, so maybe someone else can field this one.  Sounds full of math.  I hate math.

[Monkooky]

Re: Bionic Dues- it mayyyy have been one difficulty down? I think it was misery tho. I was running Science, Sniper, Siege, and Brawler with scan through doors lady. I got literally no defensive items on anything but the brawler, got mad scanner range on science, and prioritized attacking factories and doing lion's den/assassinate missions.
Don't get me wrong, it was tense as hell since a single wrong move usually meant a dead mech, but my strategy didn't actually depend on much besides "what is the range on this enemy" and "can my brawler tank it and save my sniper some ammo"

As for the "shitty items"- yeah I knew this would probably be wrong as I typed it.
I only really use consumables against bosses. Probably should fix that. Might make skeleton key better.

[zoutzakje]

A bit late perhaps, but welcome to the forum and to SR =)

I try not to use any consumables against bosses, since it prevents a perfect run. For me, consumables might save my butt when I'm in a pinch in some nasty rooms. They've saved me before in rooms with double or triple blaze cannons and some other nasty thing in it.
Then again, I might have little choice with the later bosses. I haven't fought the new bosses or the revamped Terminus yet. It's been a while since I played and I can't seem to make it past floor 3 on hard anymore. The boss there usually gets me. No more guaranteed Invader spawn makes my life a lot more difficult. I had him down to a science almost.

[Pepisolo]

Welcome to the forum! Glad to see you're enjoying the game.

Yeah, the probation rewards are not very good, and will be revamped (or maybe even removed!) at some point.

A lot of items are really shitty.

Although there are a few items still in the game that need an overhaul, as Misery says, there is a lot of subjectivity to it. Since Skeleton key allows you to open up any locked chest, you can also use this to increase your credit generation to some extent, as locked chests can spawn golden credits (worth 10). The size-increasing mech actually does give you pretty hefty 33% multiplicative damage boost, which is pretty strong, I think, although Ptarth would probably have a better view of this, being the maths guy. It may be that we need to make it clearer in the text that the damage boost is multiplicative rather than additive.

Good catch there.  I don't think anyone spotted that at all.  That's a NASTY bug, that is.  Talk about unbalanced... that needs to get fixed ASAP.

Actually, I did know about this, and -- call me crazy -- but to a large extent I actually like this behaviour! When I first started testing the mech, my reactions to this were pretty much the same, that's horribly broken. But after a few runs, getting those asteroidy rooms started feeling like a nice reward. It kind of felt like I was mining the asteroid with my missiles. Of course, it's all well and good having this happen mechanically, but if that then unbalances the game then that's no good and at the very least needs to be toned down. Ptarth should probably jump into this discussion, but what do we think that a missile is worth? In terms of its credit value? Trading 1 missile for 3 credits seems absolutely fine. Being able to trade 1 missile for 6 credits in certain circumstances also seems fairly reasonable to me.  Although, yeah, if that 12 credits per missile on average for these asteroid pockets is close to accurate, that seems like too much. But basically, what I'm saying is that in general I like this asteroid mining "feature", we just need to get the numbers right, I think.

[ptarth]

• Hi. Welcome. I have to be brief. Please take my responses to your insightful comments as a measure of respect and and appreciation.
• I like the idea of asteroid mining. Hmm...........
• The Humble Missile launcher x% chance of +1 credit per kill is actually not very good unless you have a way of making missiles. It should be tweaked. Most of the obstacles were fixed to not do this, I think its just a single xml attribute that didn't get added. On the flipside I kinda like this interaction.
• Probation items are a work in progress. I'll try to do something quick with them and send it out. (BTW I'm still waiting on feedback on the caltrop mod ;p)
• Brute - I love this one. Possibly increase damage mod back to 50% multiplier (like crits! and it stacks!)
• Crit Mod - I don't recall if it is base*2 or base+2, either way without other mods it is x4 damage. Although it also depends on critical hit rate.
• Probably going to tone down the level up mods from 75% and 50% damage to 25% and 50% damage.
• A lot of items are indeed based on personal opinion. I would never get the 6 health for 1 shield pickup. But some love it because they get an extra sacrifice shop item.
• Cycling of minimap room icons - a reasonable idea.

[Pepisolo]

The Humble Missile launcher x% chance of +1 credit per kill is actually not very good unless you have a way of making missiles. It should be tweaked. Most of the obstacles were fixed to not do this, I think its just a single xml attribute that didn't get added. On the flipside I kinda like this interaction.

Quick note on this. The way the launcher works is that it's a 100% chance to get either 1 or 3 credits to spawn on kill. 33% chance for the 3 credits, I think.

[Monkooky]

Went and tested things.
If you are really meticulous about waiting for debris (shoot big rocks, let the tiny ones drift into the corners), you can get 5-7 rocks in one shot from a single barricade. With more barricades, you can get more rocks/shot.

If you aren't extremely patient, one blockade will realistically get 3-5 rocks/shot- 6 and a bit credits on average.
That is still a pretty great deal, and since blockades are the only things that behave this way it definitely looks like unintended behavior.

If you aren't convinced this is a problem, have a screenshot.

[Misery]

I will say that this does sound broken to me.

And there are things that could make this even more broken, such as that sacrifice item that gives you two missiles per room.  That's a very good item to begin with, but in this case it'd allow you to become an unstoppable mess even easier, as you'd find it very easy to pop every single rock pile with missiles due to the fact that you're going to be constantly getting them.

That mech's missile mechanic seems to be designed as something that rewards you for managing to finish off an enemy with a missile, something that is often not easy in many cases.  It makes sense in that context, you can use it to try to build up some extra cash for purchases that you want to make, but it's not just a constant freebie, you do have to work at it a bit.

This though... it ends up just being about the RNG dropping a few of those blue blocks into the level, and it'll pretty much always do this.

....also it doesn't make sense.   Those rocks really shouldn't count as enemies to begin with.  I wonder if there are other interactions with these that we've not spotted yet.

Also, considering the mech's ability to barrage things with that energy weapon it has, and the very high damage it can do, this just makes it that much worse.  Just find the blue things and you can get a whole lot more "ammo" for it.

[Logorouge]

....also it doesn't make sense.   Those rocks really shouldn't count as enemies to begin with.  I wonder if there are other interactions with these that we've not spotted yet.

Pretty much all the other interactions (onkill effects) were patched away back in version 1.015. The humble missiles just seem to use an alternate method that bypassed it.

[ptarth]

• Antigravitate Blockage is the explodey thingies name.
• Humble Missile System adds a system to the entities it hits. This system fires on death and sticks around for 10 ms, so effective if it is dying it works.
• EntitiesMyShotsHit doesn't have a check for valid targets, so it works on anything that can die.
• I think Pepisolo is the one that made it this way. It makes sense, you don't want to add missiles to a mech that already has full ones. I believe it will add them, even going over the cap, which still might be okay.
• If that doesn't work, then perhaps using effects with OnEnemyKilled_ByMe would do it?
• The room builder needs to be recompiled with the room-teleport tile.

[Pepisolo]

To be honest, I'm in two minds on this. Having did a ton of runs with the Humble Mech, and using this "exploit" it just seemed fun to me, and not broken (although possibly OP). I don't think I finished the game on any of those runs, although maybe I wasn't trying that hard. Regarding the two extra missiles item, even if picking that up I don't think this becomes broken due to the limited and random nature of how many Antigravitate Blockages you encounter on a run.

However, this wasn't intentional at the time, and the launcher was designed to only drop these credits on enemy kill, so we should probably fix it so that this doesn't happen. Maybe I can reuse this mining mechanic for a different launcher or something.

[ptarth]

Or we include it as a "feature" on the mech by describing it in the description.

I like the concept of it and I don't think it is overpowered.

[Monkooky]

Or we include it as a "feature" on the mech by describing it in the description.

I like the concept of it and I don't think it is overpowered.

Go take a look at that screenshot.
I'm on floor 1.
I have 255 credits.
There is a giant pile of credits that I did not have room to carry.

I'm pretty sure that is broke as shit.