Arcen Games
General Category => Starward Rogue => Topic started by: ptarth on November 01, 2016, 01:42:01 am
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An ongoing debate that's raged since the release of the game is: How should the player regenerate health?
At one end of the spectrum you have hard core Touhou mechanics, you get hit once and game over. At the other end you have regenerating health and shields. Currently, health is regained via healing items and shields regenerate to full after each room. However, there are other options that I've been lobbying for in the face of opposition from Misery and Pepisolo. This ability for the player to have passive regeneration is something we've taken to calling Brawler Mode. My most recent effort is to start an ongoing poll to see where other people (rather than just us) stand on the issue. My current preference is to regenerate health to full between rooms along with a regenerating shield inside of rooms.
The reason I bring this up is because I believe that brawler mode will make the game more approachable to the general player (and it also matches my skill level).
What are your thoughts?
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Didn't personally like any of the suggestions, aside from the current one. I imagined a Touhou version in Starward for a moment. That would be horrible. It's too full of randomness and hard to predict patterns for a 1HKO.
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We'd have to rebalance basically everything for this to function without the player becoming immortal (or I'd have to multiply the amount of crap everything flings at you... it's probably best if I don't have to do that). Among other big issues.
It's one thing to make a game approachable, but this just isn't the right way to do it. However I thought about your other proposition (mentioned in the document, I believe), and we can go over this with the others, but if you'd like to just get one special "game isn't balanced around this" mech in... like with Redshift... that specifically uses this mechanic, that might be acceptable. Maybe. It'd have to be discussed.
If the issue is the difficulty of the game on Normal mode, perhaps some things need to be toned down, is all. I need to know what those things are though, and if that indeed needs to be done.
Remember, one way or another, this sort of game is meant to be pretty tough. It also already does offer the player lots of tools to win with, though.
But yeah, if there's issues with difficulty balance, I need specifics, if anyone has any.
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Might I suggest another option? Keep health and shields as they are now, but have the player automatically suck up available health when they need it moving to a new room. This prevents unwanted backtracking.
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As an expert not very good player, I don't believe any rebalancing is necessary. I still manage to die quite easily with any of these variants. I suppose one solution is for me to record videos so that Misery can watch my misery and then see he and I do not see the world in equal parts. ;)
The problem (probably) isn't that I can't do it. It is that I just stop caring about precision movement halfway through the game. A couple of those 'Meh" moments and I'm dead.
I consider the brawler mode to be an alternative to game saving or a continue on death system. Which would make the game more like Ys, DFO, or beat'em ups.
The other important thing to note is this would be an option. You wouldn't have to use it. Just like you don't have to use SHMUP movement.
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As an expert not very good player, I don't believe any rebalancing is necessary. I still manage to die quite easily with any of these variants. I suppose one solution is for me to record videos so that Misery can watch my misery and then see he and I do not see the world in equal parts. ;)
The problem (probably) isn't that I can't do it. It is that I just stop caring about precision movement halfway through the game. A couple of those 'Meh" moments and I'm dead.
I consider the brawler mode to be an alternative to game saving or a continue on death system. Which would make the game more like Ys, DFO, or beat'em ups.
I think that just having it as an option and saying THIS IS NOT BALANCED would work too. That way you have to specifically enable it, and if you don't want it you don't touch it. Kind of like cheat codes.
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As an expert not very good player, I don't believe any rebalancing is necessary. I still manage to die quite easily with any of these variants. I suppose one solution is for me to record videos so that Misery can watch my misery and then see he and I do not see the world in equal parts. ;)
The problem (probably) isn't that I can't do it. It is that I just stop caring about precision movement halfway through the game. A couple of those 'Meh" moments and I'm dead.
I consider the brawler mode to be an alternative to game saving or a continue on death system. Which would make the game more like Ys, DFO, or beat'em ups.
I think that just having it as an option and saying THIS IS NOT BALANCED would work too. That way you have to specifically enable it, and if you don't want it you don't touch it. Kind of like cheat codes.
Yeah, the only way I can see it working is if we have a Cheat Code menu that disables achievements. We could put all kinds of different options in then. SHMUP mode only changes how the control method works in a very small way, it's more of a nicety as an input option. Brawler mode would completely break the standard balance of the game, though.
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I'd have to look into adding an entirely new menu, but in theory it shouldn't be difficult (Now watch as its next to impossible). I set up the framework of Brawler Mode to disable achievements, which was super simple.
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I still manage to die quite easily with any of these variants. I suppose one solution is for me to record videos so that Misery can watch my misery and then see he and I do not see the world in equal parts. ;)
The problem (probably) isn't that I can't do it. It is that I just stop caring about precision movement halfway through the game. A couple of those 'Meh" moments and I'm dead.
Personally, I think I would enjoy seeing your videos. It's always fun to see someone take a completely different approach to the game.
As for the subject at hand, instead of a separate option that's split away from the main game mode (that's how I see it at least), I would much rather see it integrated smoothly into the game as special powers, items (like the squishy hull), a brawler mech, etc.
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Alternative: one mech that throws out ALL pickups (cards, health, credits) in favor of generating items based on kills or killstreaks.
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As an expert not very good player, I don't believe any rebalancing is necessary. I still manage to die quite easily with any of these variants. I suppose one solution is for me to record videos so that Misery can watch my misery and then see he and I do not see the world in equal parts. ;)
The problem (probably) isn't that I can't do it. It is that I just stop caring about precision movement halfway through the game. A couple of those 'Meh" moments and I'm dead.
Well, see, that's part of the problem.
The reason why many players would just be outright immortal with regenerating health is because they *would* be still doing all the dodging, even if they're not too good at it. But any hits they took, they could just suck it up and regen and then dive back in. The ONLY things in the game that could probably stop them in this case would be the major heavy-hitters like Terminus as it's currently balanced (nothing to hide behind in it's room, and it hits like a freight train). But 95% of the game isn't giant solo boss monsters.
Yeah, the only way I can see it working is if we have a Cheat Code menu that disables achievements. We could put all kinds of different options in then. SHMUP mode only changes how the control method works in a very small way, it's more of a nicety as an input option. Brawler mode would completely break the standard balance of the game, though.
If you guys want to put stuff like that in a big cheat menu, that's fine by me. You can come up with other loopy things if you'd like, too. Cheat menus are fine. They're usually hidden (or half-hidden) somehow though?
Have any cheats used appear on the results screens. You know, at the end of the game and between rooms. Heck, display any incredibilities taken, while we're at it (since with those it's like, hey, you managed it while this horrible thing was turned on!).
Might I suggest another option? Keep health and shields as they are now, but have the player automatically suck up available health when they need it moving to a new room. This prevents unwanted backtracking.
Wouldn't work with this type of game really. A lot of pickups, including health, are placed behind traps, bombables, or whatever. So with pretty much every game in this genre it means that just because a pickup is there, you cant necessarily get at it without danger or spending resources (and sucking them in would break that). I suspect this is a big part of why the devs of Enter the Gungeon came up with their warp system; it's certainly a huge reason as to why we're now using a similar mechanic. To make the backtracking much faster, since there's no real way to totally avoid it.
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Might I suggest another option? Keep health and shields as they are now, but have the player automatically suck up available health when they need it moving to a new room. This prevents unwanted backtracking.
Wouldn't work with this type of game really. A lot of pickups, including health, are placed behind traps, bombables, or whatever. So with pretty much every game in this genre it means that just because a pickup is there, you cant necessarily get at it without danger or spending resources (and sucking them in would break that). I suspect this is a big part of why the devs of Enter the Gungeon came up with their warp system; it's certainly a huge reason as to why we're now using a similar mechanic. To make the backtracking much faster, since there's no real way to totally avoid it.
If pickups were designed to not spawn unless you can actually get to them, I.e. in breakables or openables, then you'd have to be able to get to them once to access them. Then this would simply be a bonus for having gotten to it once.
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My "third option" would be to regenerate HP between floors.
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30% of the people responded, thus far, in this poll think that Brawler Mode is, in some form, reasonable.
I believe that is enough people for it to be considered legitimate.
It is true that 10 people, especially since probably 5 of them are directly involved in the war, isn't a large sample.
So I simply ask, how many people would have to vote in favor for it be legitimate in your eyes?
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I guess I could weigh in here. The idea of regenerating health between rooms actually appeals to me a lot, but specifically for the hard and misery modes, since each room on its own feelslike a unique bullet hell challenge. Like, in normal mode I think things are fine as they are, but when higher difficulties mean the game is more bullet hell oriented and less rougelike, brawler mode sounds amazing.
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Go Team Flanktank!
Hey Wz. Good to see you again.
In other news, here is a video from someone who is just unbelievably bad at this game: https://www.twitch.tv/thuvian/v/98499284
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30% of the people responded, thus far, in this poll think that Brawler Mode is, in some form, reasonable.
I believe that is enough people for it to be considered legitimate.
It is true that 10 people, especially since probably 5 of them are directly involved in the war, isn't a large sample.
So I simply ask, how many people would have to vote in favor for it be legitimate in your eyes?
For a full mode? Probably not happening.
In my view, the best thing you could do is to make a full mech around this. We have a lot of mechs that use "basic" mechanics and setups. Having a couple of additional mechs that are "quirky" in the same way as the Redshift (AKA, very different mechanics when using the mech, creating a different playstyle entirely, as opposed to just starting with different weapons/stats) might be a really nice touch for the game. There actually aren't that many examples of this being done in the genre. And if said quirky mech ends up being the Azazel of the game (OP character from Isaac), then that's fine. Technically, the Redshift, when used properly, can become supremely OP already, because of it's special effect.
Considering that, right now, we're in the position of needing more mech ideas, that'd work out well.
There's a couple of additional ideas I have, relating to the creation of new mechs (which would involve adding more variety to a single mech, something that isn't done whatsoever right now, so that you have multiple options when using a "special" mech), but the detail of that is something to be saved for the emails (and I need to ponder it more first before I try to write any of it out).
Also that video was hilarious. Though I kept doing facepalms.
The biggest issue you have is.... you're using a damn keyboard. I can SEE the screwed up inputs with that. Though it's also that your movements are too wild. It's true that things are often designed specifically to get the player to panic, but zooming around wildly is a great way to be very dead very fast.
Your commentary is pretty good, though. Ever thought of doing more such videos of games? Though that IS time consuming.
I guess I could weigh in here. The idea of regenerating health between rooms actually appeals to me a lot, but specifically for the hard and misery modes, since each room on its own feelslike a unique bullet hell challenge. Like, in normal mode I think things are fine as they are, but when higher difficulties mean the game is more bullet hell oriented and less rougelike, brawler mode sounds amazing.
I'd rather not change the rules between difficulty modes. I know that Hard mode is a pretty big step up from Normal, but... the way I've always described it is that Hard mode is for those that have utterly mastered normal. To the point where Normal isn't even doing much damage to them over the course of the run, even without defensive items. Misery mode just outright isn't finished, bah (or it would be dramatically more difficult). Wish that was different but there's been too many other priorities. I can finally get back to it now though.
I have occaisionally thought that maybe we need another difficulty mode between Normal and Hard, but.... uuuuugh, I don't even want to think of the process of actually implementing that.
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I'd rather not change the rules between difficulty modes.
At the very least, if brawler mode could be toggled, it'd make for some great practice in the higher difficulties, specifically first-hand experience in an actual room situation or to fight bosses with some kind of actual build that's beyond the test chamber capabilities. Like the idea of the cheat menu mentioned earlier, I suppose. But yeah, no overall rule changing; the game's current formula is too good to be modified.
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I think the choices with Brawler mode are either as a full mech or as a cheat mode option that disables achievements. Interested in any of these, Ptarth? Or are you still pushing for a legitimate proper game mode with achievements enabled?
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Personally, I'm pushing for it to be a cheat mode that disables achievements. Having it be a mech would make the achievements next to worthless and would make that mech the obvious choice for every difficulty since there is little challenege foe using it.
Typed from my phone.
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The forum format is not good for this type of discussion. There is no way to isolate and store progress on issues. I have responded to each of the claims in the other document.
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The forum format is not good for this type of discussion. There is no way to isolate and store progress on issues. I have responded to each of the claims in the other document.
I dunno, frankly, it seems a hell of a lot better than that damn document. I spent TEN FREAKING MINUTES putting ONE sentence in there just now. It crashes and fails at a rate I've never seen before. I'm going back to emails again. It's a giant pain, but I think I've had enough of Google-related anything to last a thousand years. Even YouTube works better than that does. Their HQ should be filled with bees. Every cubic inch: Bees.
EDIT: Just when I thought that Google-related things had hit rock bottom, someone threw them a pile of nuclear jackhammers.
You cant even COPY FREAKING TEXT in there, a simplistic command handled by Windows most of the time, without downloading a "Special Google App :D :D :D" Which I'm guessing causes your machine to explode into a pile of rabid squirrels. Really, SOMEONE at Google (everyone?) needs to be on fire for having developed this entire thing.
I'll write up some answers to stuff in there in emails later today. Was going to do it right now. But Google happened. BEES, DAMMIT.
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I'll reiterate what I said in the document: Adding the feature as an optional "cheat" that disables achievements gives no one any advantage. It just makes players who aren't very good at the game feel like they're better at the game, and thus more likely to play and recommend it. While the hardcore players might say its a stupid idea, they can always just not click the button. It wouldn't be a default feature, it would be an opt-in feature. If we add in the feature, we make a minority of people happy, and the majority of people just never touch it. This can possibly translate into more sales, and more popularity. Personally, I'd rather not piss off the little guys, since this was extremely easy to implement so far (All someone needs to do is add the actual health regen on room change or per tick).
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I, personally, have no use for a brawler mod.
As a cheat, I see no reason to object to a brawler mod.
An alternate solution may be to make health pickups scale up with the health multiplier. If you are taking more damage per room than you heal, being on Very Easy won't fix that at all- but if pickups healed 8x as much, perhaps it would.
On another note, is this "other document" a public thing that interested parties can view? If so, where can I find it?
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An alternate solution may be to make health pickups scale up with the health multiplier. If you are taking more damage per room than you heal, being on Very Easy won't fix that at all- but if pickups healed 8x as much, perhaps it would.
For the latest internal build, Easy mode has a x2 multiplier on health pickups, Very Easy has a x3 multiplier. Plus, there is a perk at level 1 which can give you an additional x2 multiplier, if you are the sort of player who struggles with attrition.
On another note, is this "other document" a public thing that interested parties can view? If so, where can I find it?
It's not public at the moment. Maybe we could make it public, I'm not sure, we'd have to discuss it. Things are a bit crazy on there at the moment, it mostly has our expansion plans, ideas, discussions etc.
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It won't become a public document. It contains information that is not suitable for public release for a variety of typical reasons. We may share certain portions at various dates to survey people's thoughts and perspectives. Likewise, feel free to create or continue threads of your own. None of us are professionally competent in proper public relations procedures and so we have to take a conservative route for documentation access. We apologize if this is disappointing. Regardless, we will try to respond in a reasonable and sensible fashion.
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It won't become a public document. It contains information that is not suitable for public release for a variety of typical reasons. We may share certain portions at various dates to survey people's thoughts and perspectives. Likewise, feel free to create or continue threads of your own. None of us are professionally competent in proper public relations procedures and so we have to take a conservative route for documentation access. We apologize if this is disappointing. Regardless, we will try to respond in a reasonable and sensible fashion.
Yep, can't make it public for a variety of reasons. If you have suggestions, we're definitely open to them.
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Yep, can't make it public for a variety of reasons. If you have suggestions, we're definitely open to them.
Suggestion: If you guys decide to go with the cheat menu, could "dev-mode" and "everything unlock" be moved there? Seems like they would fit perfectly and it would clean up the interface a bit.
Also, if the achievements disabling is already in place, could you include a few basic cheats (infinite cash, infinite energy, etc) in that menu just for players to mess around with? I'm sure some players will have fun with that.
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No worries about the document. I mostly didn't want to raise issues that had probably been discussed already.
I guess my big question about brawler mode, particularly if being relegated to a cheat is unsatisfactory, is why do you want it?
Like, why health regeneration specifically over other things that make the game easier?
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Yep, can't make it public for a variety of reasons. If you have suggestions, we're definitely open to them.
Suggestion: If you guys decide to go with the cheat menu, could "dev-mode" and "everything unlock" be moved there? Seems like they would fit perfectly and it would clean up the interface a bit.
Also, if the achievements disabling is already in place, could you include a few basic cheats (infinite cash, infinite energy, etc) in that menu just for players to mess around with? I'm sure some players will have fun with that.
DevMode and UnlockAll both are required to be set at the beginning of a run, and I don't think they can be set during the middle of a run. I can check, but I'm 90% sure it won't work.
I'll see what I can do for basic cheats.
Monkooky, I don't the answers the your questions, so I'll let ptarth (The guy who came up with it) answer. Just didn't want you to think you were being ignored. :)
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I'll reiterate what I said in the document: Adding the feature as an optional "cheat" that disables achievements gives no one any advantage. It just makes players who aren't very good at the game feel like they're better at the game, and thus more likely to play and recommend it. While the hardcore players might say its a stupid idea, they can always just not click the button. It wouldn't be a default feature, it would be an opt-in feature. If we add in the feature, we make a minority of people happy, and the majority of people just never touch it. This can possibly translate into more sales, and more popularity. Personally, I'd rather not piss off the little guys, since this was extremely easy to implement so far (All someone needs to do is add the actual health regen on room change or per tick).
If you guys want to set up a proper cheat menu somewhere in the interface, that wouldn't be a bad idea. There's probably a variety of different cheats that could be used to fill in such a thing. Unlockable cheat options, even? I think I've seen something like that before, though heck if I remember where.
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Unlockable cheat options, even? I think I've seen something like that before, though heck if I remember where.
Golden Eye on N64? Some of those were insane challenges to unlock.
Anyway, having an initial selection of a few cheats with some more as unlockables would be pretty nice. I know I would enjoy trying to unlock them all just for the heck of it.
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That is one thing we do intend on doing in a general sense, is unlockables. We should have had some from the start, and intended to, but... didn't happen. Heck if I can remember the exact reasons.
But we're going for some with the expansion, that's for sure.
No idea how it'll all work though. But there are some interesting ideas on what might be unlockable.
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Answer: because it is complicated.
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That works well enough.
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...big rant...
What on earth kind of horrid tool are you guys using? O_o
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Google's stupid document thing.
It was clearly made by the drunken monkeys that made YouTube. This is the theory I'm going with. Though I find that stuff made by Google tends to be kinda bad in a general sense.
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I voted for option 2 (full regen of health and shields between rooms).
But what I would, actually like to see is to have the option to start a game like this - for the cuasual round in the evening so to speak ;).
I would not be in favor of changing this completely, though.
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Misery, what ever happened to the idea of Incredibilities? If we want to pick those up again, wouldn't this count as one?
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Misery, what ever happened to the idea of Incredibilities? If we want to pick those up again, wouldn't this count as one?
They're in the game, but I don't know that they'd work as something like this, since you have to destroy a shopkeeper (and thus his shop with him) to get one, and you don't know which 3 Incredibilities are going to show up when you do that.
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They're in the game, but I don't know that they'd work as something like this, since you have to destroy a shopkeeper (and thus his shop with him) to get one, and you don't know which 3 Incredibilities are going to show up when you do that.
Except if it's the humble shop. Then you get most of them in one shot. :P
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OK, so Brawler mode is now in the latest build, in a dedicated cheat menu on the options screen. Achievements are disabled when this is active, of course. How does that sound to everyone? Additionally, now that we have this menu, if anybody has any more ideas for cheats they would like to see, we're looking to add a few more.
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Additionally, now that we have this menu, if anybody has any more ideas for cheats they would like to see, we're looking to add a few more.
Cheats + unlock conditions (if that's a thing):
-Infinite cash (Reach max credits during a run to unlock)
-Infinite energy (Raise max energy to 300+ to unlock)
-XP x2/x3 (Get to level 15? to unlock)
-Map revealed (Explore 90+% of the rooms during a run to unlock)
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Are we going with unlocks on the cheat menu, then?
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Oops, sorry guys. I jumped the gun when I said that the mode was in. A testing version is in, but we need to actually do a lot more work on it before it makes it into the game proper, and that probably won't be for the next build.
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An ongoing debate that's raged since the release of the game is: How should the player regenerate health?
At one end of the spectrum you have hard core Touhou mechanics, you get hit once and game over. At the other end you have regenerating health and shields. Currently, health is regained via healing items and shields regenerate to full after each room. However, there are other options that I've been lobbying for in the face of opposition from Misery and Pepisolo. This ability for the player to have passive regeneration is something we've taken to calling Brawler Mode. My most recent effort is to start an ongoing poll to see where other people (rather than just us) stand on the issue. My current preference is to regenerate health to full between rooms along with a regenerating shield inside of rooms.
The reason I bring this up is because I believe that brawler mode will make the game more approachable to the general player (and it also matches my skill level).
What are your thoughts?
I personally would like that. The gameplay of the game is fun, but I seriously suck at dodging and the colors can get confusing at times to the point where I just end up dead xD