Tiphereth wrote:
I’m totally agree with that, but I think this kind of things is not really relative to the production modules for now. I mean, even without the actual system of rising costs, the game is based on a constant back to the start of modules. Each floor is a fresh start, and you have to rebuild again your production and your defenses. But the costs are reset too. So, I don’t think the evolution of gameplay is really based on the production. To me, the evolution is actually more based on your characters (and later their skills), your items, and later, your techs.

Well, I can't agree. First of all, you start next levels with resources gathered in the previous ones. Thus, your production at each level strongly influences your progress, since its obviously better to begin with a fair amount of industry for modules and/or food for healing. Esp. on the Lv3 (and upcoming next ones), where the waves and monster welcoming parties are getting pretty deadly. Now it can be barely done.



And, on the other hand, I can't really say that heroes can bear the weight of the game alone. Sure, they are a part of the game evolution and the thing I called "Satisfaction factor" - but only a part. Try defending yourself against a welcoming party AND 3 waves at the end-game - even with max heroes. Either you'd lose half of your rooms or get some heroes pushing daisies from below. Not to mention that right now you can't even develop your heroes fully - either way cause your production is low or because you're spending a hell lot of food on healing, since you couldn't supported them with defensive modules.



IF we picture the gameplay - and source of satisfaction from using the so called "full might" that the game has to offer - as an entity based on two legs: developing your heroes and building your defences, ATM this game is a war veteran with one leg left on the beaches of Normandy.

Tiphereth wrote:
But you can’t always build modules in each of them, and I think it’s good, cause you have to do choices. To me, the important thing is to have to make tough choices. /cut

You'd had a plenty of choices before, esp. on the levels 1 and 2. The choices were already enforced by limits imposed by lack of Dust; by the placement and number of generator slots. By lack of resources ("shall I arm my room to the ceiling, or save some for next generators?"). And by you gameplay, of course. For me thats already plenty.



I'm not against "tough choices", not at all. But I would LOVE to see this game rewarding me for making good choices, not only punishing for the bad ones. Rewarding by allowing me to have fun with all my tech, skills and resources gathered up during the early hard moments. Not forcing me to crawl.



Look, its like in real life - if you're doing your job properly, you would like to get paid for it accordingly. In other words, be rewarded by the ability to pursue your interests and desires (whether it would be a new Joanna Newsom vinyl, a trip to beautiful mountains of Georgia, or a new pair of pants from H&M ;>); not left with constrains, counting your money until each months 1st. The satisfaction is not only claimed for the job itself, but by using the possibilities it opens to you (via your salary). Accordingly, the satisfaction in game is derived not only from making a good choices, but also from the possibilities they shall open to you.

Tiphereth wrote:
Also, by separating the costs of production modules, don't you just force the order the player has to build his modules? If I focus myself on industry, after 3/4 industries, the huge cost for the next ones will strongly push me in an other direction, like food or science module. So, in fact, you limit the choices to make. To my mind, the old system was better for what you want: a constant progression. You could build more modules, but you always had to choose which one. With your system, the more you will focus on one module, the less you will have choices after. So, I'm not sure it's a good answer to the balance problem of modules.

Well, it mustn't be the way you said. Sure, it is a form of constraint, but they are plenty of them already (like I said: Dust, placements, etc.). On the other hand you're already forced to play some builds. For example, you can neglect the food production at the beginning, but what would happen if you'd find a new hero in the very next room, won't have resources to recruit her/him and he dies at very next moment, since two waves had spawned pass him? This game encourages you towards equal development anyway.



I'm not saying that my idea is the best one; twas only a proposal. I can bring in another one: leave the current scalling mechanism, but also allow for reclaiming part of costs when demolishing modules. Thus you would get a new source of income for developing new rooms. AND be faced with new decisions, just like you wanted The decisions whether you want to "move" your perimeter, strengthening your first line of defense (but also leaving the rooms behind vulnerable), or develop your rooms equally, thus bringing your heroes less support, but also giving yourself a place for fall-back (also, leaving some traps for those nasty crystal-hungry-monsters).



I think the problem we have now is that the game was... balanced unbalancedly This change was aimed towards the Lv3, which truly could change into a steamroll. I admit that I'd found myself frequently in situation when my industry output easily reached 200, 250 per turn. So awrite, it needed nerfing. But concurrently it has made the Lv1/Lv2 stages pretty much unplayable.



Thats my concern.





--------------------------------------

Tanis wrote:
As the devs said, this is an alpha version and its not really about balance the game !



As this post grow and the ideas coming from everywhere, should i summary the ideas in the first entry of the post ? I think it would be clearer for the devs and us (rather than reading every entries).

I know, thats why I'm giving my feedback at this point of game' development.



You can try making such resume. Surely, it would be easier for the devs. But also I guess it would be a Cindirella's work AND the resulting post will be of gargantuan size :> If you have time during the Christmas break...

What I think would be the best solution for this exploit is just make the monsters that spawn when you pick up the crystal drop nothing. The whole thing would lose its sense then, because you can't really stock up on items with it and Dust resets every level anyway. It wouldn't ruin anything in the game, just this farming trick.

Another option would be to put a timer when the crystal is lifted from it's pedestal. Maybe because it runs out of energy after a while/becomes unstable when not on a pedestal/opens a rift to the ninth layer of Hell/will summon Ewoks who'll cuddle you to death.



(Not that it makes any sense, but it's a scifi/fantasy game after all.)

Yeah, I definitely want Ewoks too ^^.

Some thoughts:



Like many of those who've already posted before me, I've found some surefire tactics to mow through the Alpha test. After playing through a few times, I had some thoughts about ways to make the game more challenging/rewarding:



1) Why not make some doors require multiple people/stat reqs to open?



The ship took a nasty beating, then crash landed, yeah? Why not have some of the doors damaged in such a manner that they require EITHER: multiple folks to wedge it open, a super strong (or multiple weak) characters to pry it open, some witty folks to figure out how to open the door, or other such issues? Not only does that increase the tension/gamble of the moment between rooms (what happens when the tank has to sit back and wait for the fragile witty characters open the door?), but it makes the game depend more on the heroes--which would help make the game feel more like a rogue-like to me. As of now, I feel like the tower-defense elements are more important than savvy use of our characters.



This might also be a way to deal with the linearity issue with the way we're exploring the dungeon. If I have three characters and their combined wit score isn't enough to figure out how to get through one door, they have to explore another path. Especially in later levels, when there are multiple ways to get to the exit, this could make exploration that much more a gamble.





2) Bribing merchants/potential heroes to move?



Let's go back to this ship being a wreckage. I need to read more thoroughly to know the story of the game for sure, but from what I can see from my playthroughs, everyone--merchants and potential recruits alike--is stuck on this dead ship on a hostile planet. The group of heroes we're playing are trying to do something about the situation--so why aren't the merchants begging to move to a safe zone when its offered, and the other non-recruited heroes trying to help out in other ways?



Obviously, it'd be too easy if we encountered a merchant and we could just whisk him off to safety in the thick of our defense and offense towers. And the heroes we encounter but don't hire on (for whatever reason) have no reason to join our suicidal mission of trying to grab these crystals without some sort of recompense (thus the food cost)--but why wouldn't they agree to hang out in the much safer zones we create? Why do we have to build to them, instead of convincing them to come to us?



What if we could "bribe" these folks with food or dust or gear to set up camp in our actual safe zones? Even if this was only an option available to certain heroes to provide (characters who're more altruistic), I think it'd provide some flavor to the game. You could have had a really bad luck of the draw with some of your rooms, and not have enough defense systems in an area of control--but if you could hire someone for say, 10 food to sit in that room to help defend it, it could add an additional layer of strategy.



Alernatively, you could "bribe" these folks to do something else with the right supplies. Maybe they can increase one heroes stats for a price, or upgrade a piece of equipment, etc. It could make these random encounters with survivors seem more dynamic.



On the topic of dynamic survivors, here's my third and probably most troubling suggestion:



3) Why not have "enemy" survivors on later levels?



People act strangely in moments of conflict. There are plenty of examples in our modern times of extreme circumstances prompting extreme reactions to those who find themselves caught in those circumstances.



Imagine what it would be like for the characters. They crash on this hostile planet after their ship is shot down. Resource scarcity, fear, a desire to assert control on an otherwise uncontrollable turn of events--other people than the heroes we control would be ganging up to survive. These could be the heroes we passed up over the different levels, the surviving members of the ship's crew--whoever.



As far as game mechanics would go: those levels with survivors as opponents would have us running up into rooms where the survivors have their own turrets/defense units set up. Capturing their supplies could be worth the risk, but in addition to waves of monsters, raiding humans could really shake up the way the game plays.

Saw this in the Steam discussion too, but I thought I'd post here, all these ideas are pretty interesting.



While thinking about 2), I thought of this: probably not all the heroes you will find over the course of the game will be as friendly or helpful to your party (I imagine that the more helpful/friendly ones wouldn't require bribing so much but would move to the places you have defended and help; Starshayd's trust mechanic might even work into this). Some of these might not require a bribe (apart from the more altruistic ones), but make life really annoying for you. I was thinking along the lines of this: suppose one heroes you find requires no bribe to move towards you, so you assume that this hero is probably a good one based on this behaviour (and what you've seen already supports this). Suddenly when monsters come in this hero just panics and attacks whomever and whatever at random like a madman. You can't control this hero because you don't have any available party slots, so what do you do? Do you just deal with it despite the risks? Or perhaps kill this guy? If you do kill this guy, maybe one of your party members feels a little more at risk staying in the party that she decides it would be better to stake it out on her own or otherwise becomes a bit more nervous (however that may look in gameplay terms). There's a moral decision to be made which will have an effect on the game.



I think this may also could play into 3) when you find other survivors. Perhaps they have stocked something you really want and deem worthy of stealing, but these aren't survivors that are necessarily getting in your way; neutrals so to speak. Do you make that decision or not? I think there's a weightiness that adds to the game in these kinds of decisions, which adds to the immersion of the player when done well.

Hello everyone, tis my first post here. I'd like to warn you all that brevity is not my strongest trait, as Steam Forum users have learned already a few times ;> So, be warned!



Anyway, after almost 10 hours in game I guess thats enough time to share some thought. Since I'm not gonna start my adventure on this forum by spamming new thread, I shall throw my few pennies worth here. So...



Things I liked

1. Humour - aye, thats my first place. I really enjoyed finding those easter-eggs. All those wee winks towards the "McGyvers of survival" theme. T-shirts, battlefield injectors, prison soap, tesla coils... And the claymoar. Oh, that name has won my heart.



2. Interiors & dynamic lights - as the graphics were praised frequently already, I'm gonna to pinpoint the strongest part about it - at least in my humble opinion. And this reward goes to the interiors. Really, even despite the constrains put on by simplicity of the graphic style, they manage to capture the mood of those dilapidated, mysterious and sinister corridors. Especially with those shadows creeping...



3. Music - again, great effort on Fly By No part.





Thinks this game lacks, but I guess they're on their way...

...so I'm not going to waste much time here.

A. Map - s'pose its obvious. My dream anticipate having some icons on them (picturing your heroes, crystal, waves, maybe exit) that allows instantaneous shift to that location



B. Scalable difficulty



C. More levels - moar fun



D. More mobs types, more skins - same here



E. Something like story drive - at least some "clouds", lets say "Its an exit! And look, our crystal fits here!". After all, do we know why they are fighting their way across those dungeons at the first place? :> Some bestiary would be nice too; some lore behind this game. I do hope its coming sooner or later!





Things that looks like issues to me



I. The level of randomization - of course the idea itself is wonderful; and ES ensure me that the engine powering it can be very reliable. But here... Awrite, I'll start it again. This game certainly depends on huge part on luck. At what point shall we find next heroes, whether the shape of the dungeon will help us or THEM, the amount of Dust to be found on each level, and so on. But I guess there should be also some certain rules into it. Rules not to ease the game, but rules that make it possible; rules that allow to play the different aspects of this game in their full extent.

Lets take a look at one of my latest games: at Lv1 I'd found no blueprints and no heroes, only ridiculous amount of stuff that mostly wasn't for my lads (both guys were melee, while I grabbed FUzzi or Peashooter). And guess what - no merchant on this level. At Lv2: one blueprint, one hero. Thus, I've entered the Lv3 having only the basic laser, damage buffer and 3 heroes. Sure I tried to survive. Got swarmed after room 5 or 6...

What I mean is that such situations really ruins the experience. For what purpose are all those upgrades if we can't even lie our hands on them? My idea is to introduce a set of rules by which the randomization should works, for example at least 1, 2 blueprints per level; at least x% of rooms with dust bonus; at least one room with food / industry bonus per level; obligatory one merchant per level; one hero per level (or at least at Lv2 and 3).

Sure, the best solution would be to have some options to set, same like "Galaxy advanced" in ES. Thus giving us a choice how we want our game to be - almost perfectly predictable or insanely randomized. That would be our choice, and if we shall lose badly, that would be our and only our fault - not just frustrating jinx that spoils the fun and throws the dices against our best skills and efforts.



II. This merchant stuff... - well, we can trade our loot or get some new. Thats great. And they have some funny texts too. But then - why only for Dust? Dust, thats the most precious and scarce resource here? Dust thats the backbone of this game? I must say that this solution makes merchants completely unusable for me. Well, at least they are something like an eco-dump: instead of throwing my uwanted stuff away, at least I can sell it, maybe somebody else will have more fun with it.

And here comes the second strand: even if we consider the merchants solely as an"eco-dumps", its still pretty annoying that we can loose them even on the same round we've found 'em. Since we MUST loose all our unused stuff between levels - and I'm 100% OK with this, I understand why this mechanism was implemented - it would be nice if we'd be able to at least sale it. The Crystal phase is supposed to be a culminating part of each level, aye? After all this exploring, we're preping ourselves for the final push. So it would be nice to have all the Dust available?

But I can't, cause I'd met a merchant in room 4 and hes got already slaughtered somewhere in the mid-game.

I find this quite annoying. Maybe its not a game-breaking flaw, nor its something hugely frustrating. But on the second hand I can't justify this way of things. Even from the lore point of view - so what, they'd managed to survive in this dungeons this long and now they get massacred by some bugs? No way; nonsense!

I can devise some solutions. The most complicated one assume the option to "tow" them to our crystal. We meet a merchant - we can choose whether we want them at that place or we can offer them shelter at our "base". By choosing the latter, we open a "para-stage" where the AI sends multiple waves trying to hinder our plan and kill the guy on his way. This method I find the best, since it opens a plenty of new options and gives us new tactical decisions. Second solution presume that the merchants are hidden only at the "dead-end" rooms, where they've found their hiding hole; such a room would lower the risk of those guys being massacred by "by-passing" waves. Third way suggests giving them at least some ability to defend them. Hey, they have a full stack of wonderous weapons and a bull terrier!



III. Unclear aiming mechanism - I'm not against the "indirect battle system" now; its fine. But I'm lacking any certainty who my heroes are attacking first and why? Its really annoying to see a Harmony mob smacking my generator, while my folks are happy fighting those tiny crystals that do nothin. I'm thinkin about an option to set the priorities for our band of survivors - even the basic, dychotomic one, like "defend myself" or "defend the equipment". Surely it would add some tactical depth into the game.



IV. The slippery slopes of the learning curve - thats the thing that keeps me afraid the most; that this game will repeat the fate of ES, by becoming a source of rants about "how this game sucks cause i'm losing". Sure, half of those complainers doesn't even deserve an effort to reply 'em, but still - those are the potential customers that could be lost forever. One thing is having the aforementioned difficulty scale, but thats covered. The other thing is giving a newbies a helpful hand. Cause for now this game doesn't. Same as ES. Maybe the current tutorial is only a rudimentary one, maybe. I really really hope that there is a plan to substitute it with something more "user-friendly".

Because, lets be honest about it, this game IS unforgiving. Even one bad choice can force you to abandon the current game; even one room too early or one upgrade not enough can bring you a sound defeat.

So at least make it understandable for the beginners; explain to them what are we looking for; that each room requires 10 Dust and the damage done to the crystal will switch off some rooms; what is the Crystal Phase; that the unattached loot will disappear between levels; that razing the modules wont give you part of the industry used back, and so on. Some static screen before the game itself wont help.

Because for now this game hugely depends on intuition. And while some of us do have enough experience to work things out, others are the adventurous types that aren't scared of doing a "force recon" and getting their butts slapped a dozen of times...there are lot of people who will hastily turn their backs. And thats something to avoid...





Guess that makes it. Long as usual. My thanks for those who broke through this chunk of text. Anyway, keep up the good work devs! I'm more then curious to see what will happen next to this game and where this adventure will lead us all

Dexterus wrote:


I. The level of randomization - of course the idea itself is wonderful; and ES ensure me that the engine powering it can be very reliable. But here... Awrite, I'll start it again. This game certainly depends on huge part on luck. At what point shall we find next heroes, whether the shape of the dungeon will help us or THEM, the amount of Dust to be found on each level, and so on. But I guess there should be also some certain rules into it. Rules not to ease the game, but rules that make it possible; rules that allow to play the different aspects of this game in their full extent.

Lets take a look at one of my latest games: at Lv1 I'd found no blueprints and no heroes, only ridiculous amount of stuff that mostly wasn't for my lads (both guys were melee, while I grabbed FUzzi or Peashooter). And guess what - no merchant on this level. At Lv2: one blueprint, one hero. Thus, I've entered the Lv3 having only the basic laser, damage buffer and 3 heroes. Sure I tried to survive. Got swarmed after room 5 or 6...

What I mean is that such situations really ruins the experience. For what purpose are all those upgrades if we can't even lie our hands on them? My idea is to introduce a set of rules by which the randomization should works, for example at least 1, 2 blueprints per level; at least x% of rooms with dust bonus; at least one room with food / industry bonus per level; obligatory one merchant per level; one hero per level (or at least at Lv2 and 3).

Sure, the best solution would be to have some options to set, same like "Galaxy advanced" in ES. Thus giving us a choice how we want our game to be - almost perfectly predictable or insanely randomized. That would be our choice, and if we shall lose badly, that would be our and only our fault - not just frustrating jinx that spoils the fun and throws the dices against our best skills and efforts.

Great feedback, and great suggestions. It's, to me, really one the most important things here : to make a random-game, but a balanced random system, and not a brainless random games like we can see in some rogue-like games.

This is, by far, my most important concern about this game.



I'm totally agree with these suggestions : randomize some things, but add some quota and limitations. The "Dust loot" should be a percentage who is increased after each kill. Like a 50% after the first kill, and 55% after the second, and 60% after the third. And again 50% when the Dust is looted. And a minimum/maximum system, to be sure to have some things at each floor.



For now, the game is too short to have really hard time with the random mecanisms. But with 12 floors, some bad floors (=total bad luck on one floor) could mean a possible game over, and it can be really frustrating. I want to loose 'cause of bad choices, and not bad dices rolls. : )



Some could think it would do the game too easy to have some control in the random things. But really, come on, there is hundreds, thousands games (video/board/card/role playing games) which are NOT random and are still really hard and well balanced. So, some limited-random things will not make the game too easy if the game is well balanced. Have faith in Amplitude.

Dexterus wrote:
Sure, the best solution would be to have some options to set, same like "Galaxy advanced" in ES. Thus giving us a choice how we want our game to be - almost perfectly predictable or insanely randomized.

I want that!



My own feedback on this Alpha 0.1.3 version :



- The upscaling costs of modules make the game more strategic. There is now a real choice to do between defense modules and industry/food modules. Sometimes, I don't know if I have to do a new production module, or first do defense modules. Before, I could do the two things in one step. Not anymore. So, maybe I need to be greedy, but the next bad waves could destroy my production module without defense! Now, sometimes, I fulfill the room with defense modules before the production module. I never did that in the previous version of the game.

- The upscaling costs make the game harder now. To loose a production module can really hurt the player. For the next and bigger floors, it should be pretty interesting!

- The exploit is no more. One big flaw quickly removed. Nice!



To do list (about little things, not large features or already planned things) :



- Manual and auto targetting system: The auto-targetting system should focus on the "damn crystal guys", but it's not like that for now. Besides, a manual targetting system would be great. Nothing new, i think, the thing was already talked elsewhere.

- It would be also really good if we could ask at some characters to focus on repairing modules, while the others still attacking. It cost me some modules to not be able to do that. : (

- Character multi-selection: Again, nothing new. It could be really usefull to have a group selection. My characters are often in separated room, to work on production modules. And after one of my character opened a new character, I often need to select my four people, on by one, to regroup them in one place. This is a relly common situation, so it would be very handy. The 5 could be used to select the four guys. 6 for the the 1 and 2 guys, 7 for the 3 and 4. (We could even do in 1/4, 1/3, 2/4 selections, but it’s not really clear and can be hard to memorize. ^^)

- To support the above proposition, it could be nice if we could reorganize the team like we want, with some dragging system.

- Could we have a shortcut to open the character menu? Actually, we can select a character with one key, but nothing to open the menu of this character (maybe F1, F2, F3…).

- To have a manual selection for working guys : I didn’t see this on the forum. But it’s one of my problems. Sometimes, two of my characters are in a room, with a food/industry module. The character A is automatically working on the module, and the character B is waiting. And I order to character A to open a door which is in the room. The character B has no time to stand in for character A, so I loose my benefit. For now, I need to exit the room with my character A, wait for the character B to going to work on the machine, and be back with character A. Not pretty sure I’m clear with my example (and my English : D).

- A tooltip with, at least, the names of modules. I know the picture is pretty clear, but when I want to talk about the game or comment a video, I don’t remember the name of the thing cause I just see it when I found the blueprint. The tooltip could also give some information, like how much production (science/food/industry) it will provide, the firepower of defense module, how much HP or %HP the HP module (I told you! Didn’t know the names ) will give, and so on.



More deeper changes and long-term things I’d like to have. So… more uncertain things ^^ :



- More scenario and more dialogues. Not something big, I know it’s a rogue-like, but some exchanges between characters could be fun, and with a large “replay-value” for this thing.

- Multiplayer games : Nothing to say, just go on the multiplayer topic! Already wrote my wishes about the multi in the official topic about multiplayer.

- Some daily-dungeon challenge: Again, just go see my topic on this. We’re now several to want that. : )

- Replace living merchants by some machines, with a whole new system of crafting machines (it cost Dust AND time, and it’s arising the danger of monsters). I wrote more on the official merchants/blueprints topic.

- More info on the character’s caracteristics. Cause I hate not to know exactly what a stat does. In a lot of RPG, there is a huge lack of information about what each stat does. Hate that! These informations could be provided by the tooltip thing I talked above! Again, I wrote more about it in the official combat topic.

- Like Dexterus said, a more controlled randomization, or better, a special mode for that. : )





There is now plenty of “feedback” topic. This one is the bigger and the only who said “feedbacks” and not only “feedback”, so maybe it could become the official one. : ) It should give more space for the other topics.

Tiphereth wrote:




There is now plenty of “feedback” topic. This one is the bigger and the only who said “feedbacks” and not only “feedback”, so maybe it could become the official one. : ) It should give more space for the other topics.

Well, when i first started this topic, it was the only one, i was like: "Why there is no feedbacks topic wtf ?"



Anyway... let's talk a bit about the new [0.1.3]a patch.

It's more a "balance" patch with our feedbacks rather than a "new" something.

I like it ! Difficulty is now ok

Keep the good feedbacks guys, we are helping a lot, i guess.



Don't forget to post your ideas on [DotE] Games2Gether & Multiplayer and [DotE] Games2Gether & Advanced Events



What bothers me a little is ...

- What's the priority of the dev team ?

- What are they working on ?

- When can we expect a content patch (I'm not a one day close but it'll be good to read to see if it's 3 or 6 months ) ?

Tanis wrote:
Anyway... let's talk a bit about the new [0.1.3]a patch.

It's more a "balance" patch with our feedbacks rather than a "new" something.

I like it ! Difficulty is now ok

Yeah, I was planning to do so too, but...well, other duties were calling. And suddenly when a man wants to write a bit longer post, it eats up your time like a hungry Craver eats his planet....



Anyway, ad rem:

Sadly, I must disagree with my preceding poster. I dislike the changes brought by this upgrade. Well, parts of it. I am OK with amendments in the crystal phase, as they obviously are about neutralizing the crystal exploit.

I also understand the idea behind the part about rising the prices of generators. Thing is - I strongly disapprove the method.



In my vision, the game should be challenging, sure, but also should leave a path to success AND satisfaction from the gameplay. By typing satisfaction I mean this kind of feeling you have during the end-game, when you can utilize many of the game mechanics; when you can use your painfully crafted skills and long awaited techs.

Please understand me - I'm not saying about steamrolling. I don't want the endgame to be a cinch, a boring easy-peasy slaughter of AI-controlled mooks. I want to strife with an enemy, I want to break a sweat, but all this while I'm using all the might the game gives me.



Example? Take ES. The satisfaction hits the base when after 100/150 turns of balancing over the brink of destruction (or, at least, shameful fail), of tearing my part of galaxy, I can finally feel like a powerful empire, with my shipyards spewing dreadnought in 2 turns, with my most advanced guns blazing, with my people don't knowing what a strike is anymore. The ES would be unsatisfactory if I'll be winning my game still using Cruisers with tier2 weapons, with my systems still rebelling and without the ability to colonize gas giants or reduce red anomalies. Sure, I would win - i'm happy, challenge accomplished. But so what if I didn't get a sniff, a blink on all those fancy techs and abilities waiting for me at the end?



In my sense this game has shifted towards this second attitude. Instead of utilizing all my goodies, I must crawl and count every penny like - a'propos upcoming Christmas - Ebenezzer Scrooge at his best. Sure, great I've found the claymoar upgrade. So what, if I have only enough industry to set two lasers (since hypothetically I still haven't found TESLAs blueprints)?



And tis all still before the introduction of skills and Science generators. Even now I'm struggling with industry production; what is going to happen if I'd be to sort out yet another part of it for science gens?



Not to mention that in this current situation as lief you can throw LAN out of the game. I can't imagine myself being in the position to afford at least one. I simply can't.



Solution? My proposal is to change the mechanics of growing costs by dividing it among the generator types. So the "inflation" would be counted for each gen separately, f.e. if I have 2 food & 5 industry generators, the next industry gen would cost me 24 ind, but the next food one - only 16.



Cause the fun is the thing we are here after all! If I'd be looking for a treadmill, I would get back to my old job... :>

By typing satisfaction I mean this kind of feeling you have during the end-game, when you can utilize many of the game mechanics; when you can use your painfully crafted skills and long awaited techs.

I’m totally agree with that, but I think this kind of things is not really relative to the production modules for now. I mean, even without the actual system of rising costs, the game is based on a constant back to the start of modules. Each floor is a fresh start, and you have to rebuild again your production and your defenses. But the costs are reset too. So, I don’t think the evolution of gameplay is really based on the production. To me, the evolution is actually more based on your characters (and later their skills), your items, and later, your techs. It will be the part of the evolution of the mecanisms, I think. Maybe the floors too. And the Dust. At each floor you “loot” more and more Dust, cause monsters are always more and more. So it’s also more and more rooms, and so more production modules. But you can’t always build modules in each of them, and I think it’s good, cause you have to do choices. To me, the important thing is to have to make tough choices. And right now, there is more of these choices than before, cause before, we could constantly build new modules, but the choices didn’t really matter, because we had no problem to build multiple modules. With the actual system, I found myself in new situations, with new choices.



Also, by separating the costs of production modules, don't you just force the order the player has to build his modules? If I focus myself on industry, after 3/4 industries, the huge cost for the next ones will strongly push me in an other direction, like food or science module. So, in fact, you limit the choices to make. To my mind, the old system was better for what you want: a constant progression. You could build more modules, but you always had to choose which one. With your system, the more you will focus on one module, the less you will have choices after. So, I'm not sure it's a good answer to the balance problem of modules.

Dexterus wrote:


Solution? My proposal is to change the mechanics of growing costs by dividing it among the generator types. So the "inflation" would be counted for each gen separately, f.e. if I have 2 food & 5 industry generators, the next industry gen would cost me 24 ind, but the next food one - only 16.

That's exactly what i was thinking yesterday while playing ... It seems more "logical" that way but ... it'll be more easy again.

What i mean here is that, at the moment, you have to make a choice of going Industry or Food. Well, its still pretty easy without spamming Industry or Food Gens (like we used to), so its ok with 3 levels, we'll see later if its balanced or broken.



As the devs said, this is an alpha version and its not really about balance the game !



As this post grow and the ideas coming from everywhere, should i summary the ideas in the first entry of the post ? I think it would be clearer for the devs and us (rather than reading every entries).

Tiphereth wrote:


- The upscaling costs of modules make the game more strategic. There is now a real choice to do between defense modules and industry/food modules. Sometimes, I don't know if I have to do a new production module, or first do defense modules. Before, I could do the two things in one step. Not anymore. So, maybe I need to be greedy, but the next bad waves could destroy my production module without defense! Now, sometimes, I fulfill the room with defense modules before the production module. I never did that in the previous version of the game.

- The upscaling costs make the game harder now. To loose a production module can really hurt the player. For the next and bigger floors, it should be pretty interesting!

Some thoughts about the scaling costs:



I wouldn't make it so that the costs of all modules raises by three each time. I think it should cost more for each of the modules. If I build three industry, my first food shouldn't cost 19--it should still cost 10.



I would also suggest to lower the total stacking cost of each new module to +2 instead of +3 if each modules price raises independently to the others. Right now, three modules costs 39 industry. Your third module will cost you twice as much as your first module. When you factor in the fact we might have to build science modules, that means to build four modules we're paying a total of 58 industry--meaning we spent effectively 14.5 industry per unit. We'd spend 15.8 for the next module, then 17.17 per module for the next.



Alternatively, just have the price of modules go up by +1 for each module built total. By the time we have one of each module type (assuming science is a module), we'll have spent an additional +9 industry--so three modules nearly for the price of four. The next module'll have made us spend a total of +13--which means to have four modules, we've spent enough for 1 and 1/3 another one. Then the next module will cost 1.6, then 1.9, then 2.1.



So by the 7th module built (meaning MAYBE 2 of each kind and then 1 more of another), we're spending 17 points to build the module--but we've spent 7*10+ (1+2+3+4+5+6+7) industry. That's 98 industry total on 7 modules, with only a +10-14ish depending on the wits to industry each time a door is opened if the player builds two industry modules right off the bat, and can devote one or more hero to working that module.







Granted, I am making this suggestion after two bad runs--Five rooms between module slots on the second level xD. I'm also making this suggestion without considering how the characters' skills will impact the way the game plays.

Moreover, it is already impossible to extract the crystal without having found the exit and this evil strategy stays totally possible. Limited by the anability to keep dust between levels (yeah, I think that the heroes had some serious brain damages during the crash, they just throw all their dust and unequipped stuff before the next level...) and the obligation to find the exit first but possible.



However, Kitel talk about a new place for Crystal. Actually there is only one other place : the exit. But I think it would be pretty nice for making strategy to have more crystal sockets by levels while excluding the possibility of replacing the Crystal in a prévious socket.

Hello guys,

First, I just want to say Bravo to the devs of the great game and the amazing alpha they made. The new patch is cool and more difficult.



Suggestions:



- End of each wave:

If I want to know when the wave is over, I always check the regen of the health from each of my character OR I check on the right bottom the "flashing red" when it will stop. Can we have a little message or something to know the waves are over?



- Merchants:

Always paid with Dust money is cruel, you need these to turn on the lights... well, my suggestion is if the player want to buy an item with Dust, fine. But, maybe if the player have the possibility to pay with food or industries... maybe it will be more interesting. Ex: Big Sword: 20 Dust OR 40 food / 20 Dust OR 35 industries...



- Shortcuts:

I = Inventory, Z = Buildings, X = Health Machines C = Weapons, etc.



Sorry for my english.

I wouldn't make it so that the costs of all modules raises by three each time. I think it should cost more for each of the modules. If I build three industry, my first food shouldn't cost 19--it should still cost 10.

This is what we discussed with Dexterus. I’m not sure about that. For some reason. You can read our posts, you’ll see why. : )

Well, I can't agree. First of all, you start next levels with resources gathered in the previous ones.

Oh! I planned to talk about that, and… well, I forgot! So, I’m agree you’re not just like you were on the first floor, cause you have already gathered some resources. And yeah, it’s a part of the progress you made. I like this thing. If I want, I can risk more trouble on a floor and continue to explore, even If I already found the crystal. So, I can earn resources. But to me, it’s exactly why it’s important that I can’t stock too much resources, because the game have to make me needs the production modules. If the rewards are too much high and the resources too high, I am no more so concern by the productions modules. At the third floor, with the old system, I was so full of industry that it was no need for me to build industries modules. I still built them, but there was no danger and no hard choices here.

Try defending yourself against a welcoming party AND 3 waves at the end-game - even with max heroes.

Yeah, but it’s also true with modules. Try let a room with just your production module and some protection modules. With more waves (like in floor 3), your production module rarely live after one or two “crystal golem”, and the faster monsters will just pass your defenses! Plus, I’m waiting the skill tree to see what’s coming about heroes! And it’s still a better evolution than modules, which are all reset at each floor. For now, the characters are always more powerfull than defense modules, and they can repair modules (even between two vagues). Modules, next to that, are for now always the same. You have the three levels of modules, and that’s all. And even with a big industry, you still are limited by sockets in each floor. That’s why I’m still thinking your characters are for now more constant in their evolution. It will be probably different when the tech. tree will be here. We should have options to upgrade towers!

By lack of resources ("shall I arm my room to the ceiling, or save some for next generators?").

Well, that’s the point. If I’m focusing myself on industries modules, I’m quickly so full of industry that the dilemma you suggest is no more. At first, it works, but after one or two floors, I have plenty of industry, and I have enough to not have to choose anymore. So, that’s why I like the actual system. Now my resources are more precious than before. Sure, I would prefer have the possibility to build more towers and still have more difficulty to balance that! It would be the best solution, but I don’t really know how to do that because of the actual game mecanisms. Cause here, the difficulty is all about monster waves, and more of them don’t mean harder choices in resources, cause they still come the same way, by the same rooms unpowered, towards the same rooms limited by sockets. The lack of sockets and powered rooms limit your actions and how you spend your resources, with harder monsters or not. So, with more resource, or lesser costs for modules, I will still have too much industry, and not enough tough choices.



Maybe we could resolve that problem by raising monsters wave, but not raising the modules prices, and giving the possibility to the player to add sockets (defense and even production) by spending industry. You would have more options and choices, more industry again, more builds, but also a new expend, a necessary one, to have solid defenses. Maybe we would have a better feeling of rewarding (‘cause I’m like you, that’s what I want! ), without break the game difficulty.

For example, you can neglect the food production at the beginning, but what would happen if you'd find a new hero in the very next room, won't have resources to recruit her/him and he dies at very next moment, since two waves had spawned pass him? This game encourages you towards equal development anyway.

I’m not totally agree with that. With one or two early food modules, you have, for now, enough to recruit some guys and heal some wounds. I think it’s good the way it is. I can have my four people at level 1 and rely only on my towers, or I can rely more on my characters (but not enough for now, to my mind). For now, in each of my games, I built two food modules (sometimes just one, if I have enough food in stock), and all the rest focus on industry). ‘Cause for now, food is not used as much as industry. Because of the actual limitation of levels (well, we quickly have our level 5 for our 4 guys yeah?), but also because we don’t need so much of healing for now (need to do something about that I think!).



I don’t want the game force me to balance my game. I want to have the choice. Food focus, industry focus, science focus, balanced focus, I want all these strategies be good, but not at the same level. It should be an effective one for each game, which should be relative to the situation and the random things. The others strategies could still work if I want to play differently, but could not always be the best.

I'm not saying that my idea is the best one; twas only a proposal.

Yeah, I know. I’m not so sure myself. But it’s cool to debate about it anyway.



It’s funny, cause I think we share some vision of what the game should be (randomize-controlled gameplay, rewarding and growing experience not fond on limits who prevent the player to enjoy all the mecanisms…), but we’re not agree about how to do that. : )

I can bring in another one: leave the current scalling mechanism, but also allow for reclaiming part of costs when demolishing modules.

Yeah, I was thinking about that too. I think it could be good. With the new system, costs are high enough to give the player some tough decisions. So the game can be nice with the player and give him back some money I think. : )



And give back some money when demolishing modules could also add some new “nomad” strategies. Cause for now, there is no real reason to destroy a module but for a mistake, or, sometimes (rarely), after a new blueprint (I’m thinking about the defense modules). There would be more moving gameplay, giving the player more paths to follow.



And there is plenty of situations in floor 3 when you fill a room with multiples defense because the waves are strong, but you find out that beyond, this is just two rooms and a cul-de-sac. So basically, you spend your money for nothing, and you couldn’t know, ‘cause, well, you don’t have the information. It’s all about luck. You could wait, but it’s nonsense to have to wait you explored several rooms, and finally defend the path when it’s only two or three rooms left to explore. We’re back at the same problem. So yeah, I’m totally agree with the idea of earn some of the resource we spend to build one module.

Tiphereth wrote:


Yeah, I was thinking about that too. I think it could be good. With the new system, costs are high enough to give the player some tough decisions. So the game can be nice with the player and give him back some money I think. : )



And give back some money when demolishing modules could also add some new “nomad” strategies. Cause for now, there is no real reason to destroy a module but for a mistake, or, sometimes (rarely), after a new blueprint (I’m thinking about the defense modules). There would be more moving gameplay, giving the player more paths to follow.

Yeah but if you find the exit, you can't sell anything, could be too easy to sold all your stuff and go to the next level with 200/200 res





--------------------------------------

Dexterus wrote:


I know, thats why I'm giving my feedback at this point of game' development.



You can try making such resume. Surely, it would be easier for the devs. But also I guess it would be a Cindirella's work AND the resulting post will be of gargantuan size :> If you have time during the Christmas break...

I'll make it ! For the sake of the devs

Yeah, it's a problem. Maybe the game could limit the resources you keep at each floor (it would be more and more...). So each floor would have a minimum and a maximum. Or maybe you could limit the earning money. Like one floor per turn. You can earn some of the industry on one room, and on other rooms, there is no repayement at this turn. This way, you can prevent exploits of any sort, I think.

So many walls of texts, sorry if its already been mentioned but do the position of the weapons modules effect anything? It seems like they can shoot wherever they want no matter where they're positioned, but I'm not entirely sure.

T41 wrote:
So many walls of texts, sorry if its already been mentioned but do the position of the weapons modules effect anything? It seems like they can shoot wherever they want no matter where they're positioned, but I'm not entirely sure.

Pretty sure they don't. Not having to worry about turrets not shooting at things because they're out of its range is part of the "keeping things simple" of DotE. Also, adding to the Walls-o'-Text; sorry, the things needed explaining! :P

Dexterus wrote:
I can bring in another one: leave the current scaling mechanism, but also allow for reclaiming part of costs when demolishing modules.

I can say with some certainty that this isn't in the dev's vision of the game. It's one of the things listed their response to some of the suggestions that the community has made. Some of the other suggestions are in a similar vein, like manual targeting or positioning, and some are being worked towards, like being able to change which number selects which hero and a drag-box for selecting multiple heroes together (Yay!).



As for the patch, I have mixed feelings about it. I like the addition of scaling with the mods, makes losing one mean a lot more when you've made 4 or more since it becomes much more of an investment of industry; that's a good feel to have in my opinion. I think though that if the scaling is going to remain as a fixed amount per module, it should perhaps be toned down a bit (fepriest's post makes this clear: you pay a lot of industry extremely quickly for having many mods and this may be frustrating when golems are punching them down, though I suspect that the player is probably doing something wrong if this is constantly a problem) or as an alternative, scale as per type of module. Personally, I'm leaning towards the latter, but rather than scale per type of module as has been suggested (so if I have 3 industry mods it costs significantly more to build another, but 1 food mod would cost still 10), have the mods grouped by their role in the dungeon and keep the scaling roughly the same[/I]. So basically, it would cost more to make more mods in the same grouping (like resource production, dungeon-wide buffs/debuffs, hazard protection, etc.), but it wouldn't apply if you made a mod that plays a different role in the dungeon. This way the choice between Food, Industry, or (eventually) Science production still remains for the player, as it shouldn't be easy to gain large amounts of all resources without some (large) risk as Tipherith says, while making it possible to still build something like a LAN module without having to pay exorbitantly because you've made a whole bunch of other resource production mods before making the LAN mod. Think this is the middle ground between what's been said already. I expect that the scaling is going to take some trial and error to balance once we have access to a few more things than just resource production and one dungeon-wide buff, but that's what we're here for.



The main beef I have with the patch is the answer to the crystal exploit, I don't feel that's been fully dealt with yet and I don't really like what's been done to combat it. On one hand, it does add a lot of risk if you should choose to abuse it, but on the other, it makes the crystal run pretty darn easy to deal with if you don't. Yes, when you know what you're doing the crystal run isn't necessarily hard, but when waves don't spawn for 5-7 seconds and spawn in low numbers because I haven't picked up the crystal at any time prior to the run, it hardly feels difficult let alone intense, provided I haven't played poorly. Since I feel like the intensity of the crystal run is such a key part of the game, that it should work like this generally speaking seems to me a step in the wrong direction in terms of the vision of the game. The main point of contention I feel within this issue is the power and the availability of Dust; that is to say, that the main reasons for wanting to be able to pick up the crystal to spawn waves on command seem to me to be that players feel they wouldn't have enough Dust at all if they didn't or they want some controllable way of gaining it like Industry or Food. I see both of these reasons as weak: it's no coincidence that the player feels he or she doesn't have enough Dust for everything, that's the way the game has been designed; in other words, this is no flaw of the game itself. Merchants, powering rooms, and skills eventually[/B], all force the player to make some executive decisions as to the use of this incredibly important resource; as it should, Dust is THE resource of Endless lore, it makes sense that it would be more valuable and versatile than any other resource in the Endless world. Of course, anything that valuable is relatively rare; thus, it makes sense for it not to be found too easily in the game as well.



In game terms however, this is a bitter pill to swallow for most people. Because Dust is essential to your survival in the game and you cannot (bar crystal exploit) control its gain, it feels like you can lose the game based on "random" occurrence, that is, whether or not you got Dust. But this isn't true -- you can certainly indirectly influence the likelihood of Dust gain by intentionally leaving some rooms unpowered, thus allowing for the spawning of monster waves in them which you kill for a chance at Dust. To be fair, the fact that monsters occasionally drop Dust on death and that they spawn in unpowered rooms or rooms you can't see isn't made very clear by the game; currently, it is easy for the beginning player to miss these and think the game is a dice roll in its entirety because of it -- this should probably be changed. The point though is that players already have a way to influence the chance of gaining this important resource without the crystal's current behaviour being necessary by any means: there is a risk/reward mechanic in place inherently in leaving rooms dark, it makes sense from a lore point of view (ie. that monsters would gather in a room you can't see makes more sense than them stopping their attacks because you put the crystal in a "safe spot", as though they were suddenly blind to it), and it does not detract from the intensity of the crystal run in the way the current fix has it. In light of this, I would prefer to see picking up the crystal as a "one-and-done" deal; as soon as you pick up the crystal, monsters are going to swarm you with intent to kill, maim, and destroy anyone or anything that gets in the way, so you'd better get your ass off that floor. If a compromise must be made, then I suggest making a feature out of the exploit and labeling that as an "easy-mode" of sorts which can be used for learning (like Drizzle in Risk of Rain), but the main game is much more final in this regard, so the decision to move the crystal carries much more weight.



EDIT: On a recent playthrough, I happened across the LAN module and noticed that it doesn't scale with resource mods. Cool! Seems like they already thought of that. I felt a bit silly for not noticing, though it isn't often I happen across the LAN blueprint.