Hey Devs! Why don't you do small changes at the time? Last patch capped the income to absurd levels. :P



I suggested before to increase the cost of Emergency Generators in a way to keep them in the game as a valuable resource without breaking the game, but instead you took the other route and capped everything else. Reduce the basic income + increase the cost ofthe modules + reduce the bonus of Mechanical Pal. You want us to stick to the heroes and forget the tower defense part?



Sometimes I think there's a schizophrenic director managing this game project. At the veeeeery beginning (0.3 and so) the best strategy was to stick to the heroes - level them up and use modules increasing the damage, defense and healing. Then it slowly turned into more tower defense, with the heroes acting like the last line. Then the mobs started to wreck all the tower defense, and turn to the heroes become a major strategy (thats when the game had 6 levels or so), then slowly turned into tower defense again, with the last major patch (where the weapons had specific targets).



And now, capping the industry (because the modules cost so much, the industry level is always low), killing the tower defense aspect again. The capping is a solution to what problem, exactly?



Seriously, whats happening up there?



EDITS: I have two questions:



1. Do anybody up there play those patches before send them to us - the beta testers? I mean, play at least a dozen games, winning at least three? Or you just made up numbers, send the patch and wait for feedback?



2. Do you have an objective in terms of where these updates are going? What if you tell us what are the problems you are addressing and ask for suggestions? There are tons of people here who are interested enough to give suggestions, and mabye one of them fits on solve the problem in a way you havent thought yet.

Fabs wrote:


Or you just made up numbers, send the patch and wait for feedback?

Well, I think that's pretty much how the balancing-process works.

As you correctly stated: We are the beta-testers. We don't have to do it, if we don't like. It's our choice.



It's kinda funny how the game can go from one extreme to the other but it's interesting to follow.

Right now though, if you get those newish enemies targeting minor modules, with the low industry income, minor modules become useless. Minor modules do not do enough damage to kill anything and these enemies will destroy them. My run just bogged down on floor 6 because I don't have enough dust to light rooms and lighting one with a generator is too high a cost of industry, seeing how I am already losing 30 industry per turn easy due to enemies destroying defences.

Ail wrote:
We don't have to do it, if we don't like. It's our choice.

So its basically a 'screw you, Fabs, if you don't like, dont play it'?



But what if I WANT to play it? What if I'm seeing the process going zig-zag as crazy without see it moving forward FOR REAL? Can't I call them to be reasonable?



The game needs to step up difficulty? Great, i'm ok for that. But it needs to be a gradative up curve. Starts 'easy' then adds difficulty on each stage. But so far the difficulty is a bell curve. Piles up at levels 3 to 5, then turns up easy after that. This last patch kept the same curve, only made the levels 3-5 harder, but after that, its still smooth. It's not an advance.



The game is great - I've been playing all the iterations it has since 3.0 or something (when it was 3 floors and 7 heroes), have more than 780 hours of play accumulated - so I WANT it to work properly. But then it need direction, and I've been noticing it's lacking it lately.



The matter of emergency generator breaking the game is a sample of that nobody there thinks, or plays the new iteraction, before release the patch. I don't mind on being a beta tester, but please give our time some VALUE: don't throw anything to the wall to see what sticks. Think before. Have someone there doing the math for things like: how many generators someone can build in level one, since there's 12-15 doors and each generator cost increase dramatically one after other? Three? Four? These small things must be think before any release.

Something I've been annotating about the game, lately:



Things to fix – or suggestions – for Dungeon of the Endless:



1. Decide if the game focus on tower defense or hero defense.

If it’s tower defense, keep the income of industry high, because it’ll be needed as the mobs keep destroying minor modules time after time.

If it’s hero defense, get rid of that nonsense of lock a hero to a module, and give the heroes active skills that make the difference – like Ellie’s shell blast wipe an entire group of mobs at the time. Also give the heroes BETTER skills, or the ability of focus on combat, FIS production, dust production (pilfer or stealing), or interception (speed). Some abilities could even have a cost in terms of FIS, and no cooldown.



2. The mechanic of find a research crystal not only cap the player, but makes no sense in terms of lore. Replace the crystal for a RESEARCH MODULE – costing something like 30 Ind AND 30 Sci. Whenever a research is being made, you’ll need a hero locked there – and the hero wit should contribute to the cost of research, maybe subtracting his wit to the total cost of the project. If the hero leaves the room, research time is zeroed, but the science cost is given back to the science pool.



3. Target system: set up a dynamic target priority for heroes. This was already discussed before. If the heroes can’t have it, tweak the mobs on each stage to avoid the issue. Also, give the heroes the ability to focus fire the mobs one by one.

(It’s ridiculous have four heroes firing four different targets at the sime time, specially if the targets are tanks, like the red crystal spiders, while other mobs tear the room and the heroes at pieces, forcing you to spend industry and food just because your heroes can’t dispatch the tanks quickly enough to focus in other issues at hand.)



4. Mobs mix, size and spawn – limit them accordingly to the floor, the many heroes there are, and the levels they are.

Should have a limit of enemy types at each spawn. Also, the types of mobs should have a maximum proportion to each other – like one red spider, for one dust-eater, for one hunter, for four spiderlings.

Set up a numerical value for each mob, and set the spawn a fixed sum on each level, and after finding the exit, add a small extra into this number for every opened door after it.

You can also increase the power of the mobs individually at each floor to get rid of those buggy piling up of mobs at once that happens. The player thinks he’s seeing two red spiders when theres six or seven. Better yet, replace the mobs at each ‘chapter’.

‘Chapter’ I mean for each group of themed floors. So far we have the dungeon (first levels), then the labs, the lair of necrophages, the ‘mansion’, and the icy caverns. Give each chapter a proper set of mobs, to keep the game tight in terms of lore. Don’t simply change their colors. Spiderlings fit well for the first three levels. The trolls fit well for the dungeon, and maybe the lair – and so on.



5. Lore the difference between chapters adding a static map in the end of each stage – the points/ time/score background image - showing the progression of the heroes. They started in a crashed ship into a dungeon in a cavern, then they made a path to an old research lab, then they gone to a zone infested to necrophages… etc. You get the idea. Also, change the chapters order to fit the progression, if needed.

Well, in my opinion the things newly introduced with 0.8.x made the game too easy and now they tuned them back in place.



But I agree, that some more thought before doing something wouldn't hurt.

Balance



noun



a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions



"The Amplitude Dev Team swapped gameplay elements from an rpg focus to a more tower defense strategy repeatedly, until their game had balance and was ready for launch"

1. Watch the promo video. It's an adventure roguelike-like hero rpg tower defense & more thingamabob. Break down your mental walls trying to fit the game into one category or another.

2. I would like a science module too. I wouldn't mind having it being destroyed at the end of each research, thus needing to be rebuilt. And keeping the 'must have hero' requirement as suggested. Good idea.

3. I would like setting target priorities too; giving the party a 'target x type mobs first/target strongest/target weakest.

4. Mobs already change at each floor, but partially, to give a sense of continuity. I agree with having the mobs not occupy the exact same spot, sometimes we can't identify how many are there. I think the number of mobs is more or less fine. THe player must manage the resources to keep as many rooms lit as possible to avoid uber waves.

5. I think it would be very nice to have splash screens between levels made of combined images.

Imagine the 'end-game image', now cut out the players and enemies as sprites.

Have a few images of characters to combine with the background: attacking, operating, dying.

Also have merchant, stele, artifact & module images in an artistic style to combine, and monssters as well.

Have at least one bg, preferably more than two, to plaster the sprites over according to what the player did.

Which module was the most built? have it show up. Did a hero die? Show it. Was a character operating a module for the majority of the level? Put it there.

Dynamic, modular splashes between floors.



You could even let the player unlock the sprites and backgrounds with achievements and let him combine the images to make wallpapers, a sort of bonus 'fridge stickers' mini-zen-game inside the game.

hey all!



Just to point out a bug in this version of the game.



I'm playing a drill mode (which i'm enjoying, got a nice team, and on floor 7 right now.)

In floor 6, i had a "rough" time since i couldnt get 5 or 6 rooms ligthened. Got some defenses here, and in single/small rooms, i placed an holohero lvl 1 to see if it could slow down ennemies.

Well, of course, it didnt slowed them down, especially because of those silics mobs that target minor modules.

Once i saw that, i didnt rebuild anything there, but the next waves seemed to be blocked in the room. There was remnants of the module destroyed, and the mobs (the silics ones but also the other red silics one, with AOE) just stopped there, stacking. Kinda awkward, and also dangerous ! the screen shot doesnt seemed to be that dangerous, but the mobs always seemed to stop here.

Other mobs like little silics ones and suicidal bugs got through without flinching.







Besides, still loving this game. I agreed with many things on this patch, especially the emergency module. 30 industries was WAY too cheap in the early version. Now, 90 is ok. I mean you have to think about getting one. the next is 120, that's heavy!

Kinda sad about the pfilfer nerf but if you got a merchant, you can still sell your stuffs to get dust, and then get them back on your way out.



So yeah, still enjoying the game !

About to try the latest hotfix version, I'll post my feelings about the changes in an AAR. Thank goodness we can at least play witht he armory pod without the game breaking, I've only been playing on easy and it's gotten pretty easy witht he right strategy so some re-added difficulty will be welcomed with open arms.

Another couple of things that need to be reworked:



1. Attack power of the crystal-things that go after the modules - those shard-pyramid-things that shape make no sense. Those things are ridiculously strong, specially when they attack in band. There's NO point on buid defense modules when the floor has them, and in the same way, LAN modules are useless. I just played a game where they were spawning by dozen - just them, the blue zombies, and the red floating cubes.



2. The spawn place of the exit. At beginning, at 0.3 version, they would be placed by the last, or one before the last, room that we opened. People complained - with reason - that sometimes they ended up with the exit just a couple doors from the start, making the final run too easy. So the mechanics of the exit spawn was changed. Alright. Then the mechanic of the increased difficulty after you find the exit room was implemented. But now seems that the exit spawns around the 10th, 12th door, every time. And since the difficulty scale jump with it, most o fthe time the best solution for it is to finish any research you're doing and leave the floor asap. I just did this for the last two floors of the last game I played. And not only that, I've been noticing that overall I've been doing this a lot. Then back to my original questions to this tread: is this made on purpose? The devs WANT us to do it? That sensation of half-baked stage?



3. A last thing that I thought only now: we need NAMES for the mobs. Please somebody from the dev team make a post giving them names so we can call them correctly.

Fabs, while I do agree on some points, I also disagree. Most early levels, I can run my squad around and hold choke points to keep Industry costs to a minimum (so that I can build IND, SCI, and FOOD modules). Later on, when Dust starts to get scarce, I have plenty of IND stocked up in order to build defenses that I need, albeit, it's not always sufficient.



Enemies that go straight for modules tend to wreck them without batting an eye. This makes tower defense hard to manage.



I'll admit I'm one of the players to run straight for the exit once I find the exit on the Floors 7 and up. It's not because I want to beat the game, but because I know my resources are getting low and that I won't be able to handle the waves, even when playing on Too Easy. However, if I do have the resources or having a good run, I'll open as many doors as I can.



The game seems to go from two extremes, based on the situation at hand. I think a "fix" would be to find the perfect balance between tower defense and hero action. We did buy in for Early Access. We knew what we're getting into. Luckily, Amplitude has a great community and actually pays attention to it Just be patient, game on, suggest, report, praise.

NoirMongoose wrote:


The game seems to go from two extremes, based on the situation at hand. I think a "fix" would be to find the perfect balance between tower defense and hero action. We did buy in for Early Access. We knew what we're getting into. Luckily, Amplitude has a great community and actually pays attention to it Just be patient, game on, suggest, report, praise.

I know that, Mongoose. But thats exactly the feedback they need - even if they dont like to read it at beginning. If we start around saying 'the game is great', 'the game is marvelous', 'they will fix it' - that doesnt help in the sense of improvement. I'll be the first one to tell anybody I LOVE this game - I'm playing it since 0.1, more than 800 hours of a game that WASN'T RELEASED YET! - thats why I want it to be the BEST it can be.



Right now, I'm concerned about balance - all the time. The game can't be a cakewalk, but it also can't be frustrating, and I have this feeling that at each patch it goes from one side to the other of the scale. I think the gameplay, concerned to the mobs and their risk to the heroes, lack the element of attrition, something that shows the player that things are thoughing up. The game easily goes from opens-a-door-nothing-happens 10 times in a sequence to COMPLETE-MASSACRE-WITH-10-CRYSTAL-GOLEMS-10-HUNTERS-13-ZOMBIES-15-CHIMERAS-8-TROLLS-AND-8-RED-CRYSTAL-SPIDERS at 11th door.

I understand the research artefact to reflect that it isn't so much the heroes actively researching, but finding an access point to the science database of the Virtual Endless and recovering blueprints and the ability to tap into the existing infrastructure of the dungeon (Husk of Knowledge or what its really called?) So I am fine with it not being a module created by the player. I do like some of the ideas about heroes actively researching and using Wit to do so.

Fabs wrote:
Hey Devs! Why don't you do small changes at the time? Last patch capped the income to absurd levels. :P



I suggested before to increase the cost of Emergency Generators in a way to keep them in the game as a valuable resource without breaking the game, but instead you took the other route and capped everything else. Reduce the basic income + increase the cost ofthe modules + reduce the bonus of Mechanical Pal. You want us to stick to the heroes and forget the tower defense part?



Sometimes I think there's a schizophrenic director managing this game project. At the veeeeery beginning (0.3 and so) the best strategy was to stick to the heroes - level them up and use modules increasing the damage, defense and healing. Then it slowly turned into more tower defense, with the heroes acting like the last line. Then the mobs started to wreck all the tower defense, and turn to the heroes become a major strategy (thats when the game had 6 levels or so), then slowly turned into tower defense again, with the last major patch (where the weapons had specific targets).



And now, capping the industry (because the modules cost so much, the industry level is always low), killing the tower defense aspect again. The capping is a solution to what problem, exactly?



Seriously, whats happening up there?



EDITS: I have two questions:



1. Do anybody up there play those patches before send them to us - the beta testers? I mean, play at least a dozen games, winning at least three? Or you just made up numbers, send the patch and wait for feedback?



2. Do you have an objective in terms of where these updates are going? What if you tell us what are the problems you are addressing and ask for suggestions? There are tons of people here who are interested enough to give suggestions, and mabye one of them fits on solve the problem in a way you havent thought yet.

I've answered with the same answer on another '' Emergency Generators '' post so might as well say it here :P. Could implementing a DEBUFF on minor modules affected by the Generators energy fix the issue? Lets say -50% damage on minor modules.