Havn´t found anything specific regarding this topic but imo it seems rather obvious that melee and ranged attack types

should have their own advantages/disadvantages. At the moment whether I control a group of four ranged or melee Heroes

doesn´t seem to have an real impact - at least nothing specific I have noticed besides from different Hero stats.



I could imagine that melee heros block monsters from ranged heroes, where ranged heros have reduced health

compared to their melee counterparts. This would add another layer of tactics to hero selection and defense lines

and would also neglect the thought of a manual hero positioning in each room to achieve similar effects.



I could also imagine - and I am sure that this is discussed already somewhere else - different damage types

compared to different armour types like armor piercing weapons (e.g. lasers), shock damage that would stun an enemy

for a short duration, cold damage that slows an enemy down or fire damage that adds an dot effect or similar common effects

that have to be considered when dealing with different monsters and different armor types/resistances.

It would cool to see more damage types and maybe status effects from different items/weapons.

Personally, I dislike the idea of special resistances and damage types for DotE. It's a very high level kind of game, and those things are highly detailed mechanics. It clashes, and would most likely only muddy up the character management side of the game.



I /do/ like special effects (like you mentioned, cold for slowing and so on) but I'd like to see those as specific skills. I can see them on weapons too, but I think that way lies madness -- you either just "add ice weapon to win" or you end up with resistances and the like.



What's the issue, really, with resistances?



At a core level, they mean that either A: you must keep a wide variety of weaponry on hand at all times, just in case, or B: you will suddenly do very little damage. Want to avoid that dilemma? Then they have practically no effect on the damage output of a given character, and you may as well not have them.



Resistances work in cases like ARPGs and the like, because there is low-level feedback and proper equipment setup is a core gameplay mechanic. DotE is a highly abstracted ("high-level") game (which means a significant lack of low level feedback) and the inventory/equipment mechanic(s) are greatly reduced. It's "another thing," not "one of the most important things."



Hero positioning should be of more importance however: generally speaking, fighting off a given wave involves consolidating my forces at a chokepoint, then sitting and staring at the screen until everything is dead. Hero positioning would give me something to do while a battle is going on, which would be an improvement. (I recognize this involves "low-level" mechanics, but there is a gap in gameplay here. Hero positioning would be filling that gap. Meanwhile, resistances merely complicate what is, IMO, an already sufficiently fleshed-out part of the game.)

Different damage and resistance types (like a rock/paper/scissors model) would be hugely frustrating in a game that doesn't let you target specific enemies, and targeting enemies wouldn't work since the game is more high-level than that.



Regarding hero positioning, you already have some control on where your heroes will be. If your ranged heroes are taking too much damage, you can move them out of a room and move them back in immediately, that way they will stop attracting fire and will be positioned at the back of the room since they start firing as soon as they enter. You don't even have to exit the room entirely, just move far enough out of range and then re-issue a command to stay in the room and keep firing. I think this is a good balance between giving some control over "aggro" while still having fairly high-level gameplay that doesn't get bogged down in micromanagement.

red_locust wrote:
Regarding hero positioning, you already have some control on where your heroes will be. If your ranged heroes are taking too much damage, you can move them out of a room and move them back in immediately, that way they will stop attracting fire and will be positioned at the back of the room since they start firing as soon as they enter. You don't even have to exit the room entirely, just move far enough out of range and then re-issue a command to stay in the room and keep firing. I think this is a good balance between giving some control over "aggro" while still having fairly high-level gameplay that doesn't get bogged down in micromanagement.

I understand where you're coming from.



I believe that myself and the OP were talking about something that fits with the high-level structure, however: not "having to be such and such distance away from enemies" or the like, but rather taking into account that a melee hero is between one of those crystal golems and, say, your only Industry module -- something that does not matter one bit right now. Not so much pinpoint movement as paying attention to what order attacks are going to hit your stuff in, and have that actually make a difference. This fits the high-level ethos.

nullCassielle wrote:
I understand where you're coming from.



I believe that myself and the OP were talking about something that fits with the high-level structure, however: not "having to be such and such distance away from enemies" or the like, but rather taking into account that a melee hero is between one of those crystal golems and, say, your only Industry module -- something that does not matter one bit right now. Not so much pinpoint movement as paying attention to what order attacks are going to hit your stuff in, and have that actually make a difference. This fits the high-level ethos.

I believe it's only the crystal golem that attacks modules, and the high-health slow-moving mob that runs straight towards the crystal, that do something other than attack the heroes as soon as they enter a room. The rest will drop whatever they're doing and attack any heroes present. I think it's healthy to have some diversity in enemy types. The golem is basically the equivalent of a siege weapon that bombs your buildings while the army attacks.



That behavior also gives some more value to the LAN module and turret that increase defense of modules, which are already pretty useless as is.

That was just an example. This is basically saying "Hero Position matters". Right now, it doesn't. It doesn't do anything (unless you're dying), which is a bit surprising! Given that you do have control over it to some degree (as you noted), the mechanical expectation is that you'll use it. Ranged/Melee attackers, room defense, etc. all work to reinforce this (incorrect) feeling.



Furthermore (as I noted), there is a gameplay gap when the player has a good, comprehensive defensive line and is able to fall back to it. This should be a rewarding action; gameplay should be /present/ but relaxed. Instead, if you have this comprehensive defensive line, you just sit tight and do nothing until the wave is over. I have more fun when things are going wrong than otherwise -- not "fun" as in tension/excitement/etc, though those are also true, but "fun" as in... When it comes time to decide if I want to play another round, I'm not thinking of my best times, I'm thinking of when something went horribly wrong and I had to drop everything and regroup ASAP. That is backwards. There is no reward for cleverness -- indeed, the gameplay gap feels more punishing. So my argument for Hero Positioning as a core gameplay element is:



1: The game has a backwards reward model on the highest level (clever strategy->be bored till the wave dies out).

2: The game has a flat difficulty on the highest level (clever strategy->no risk).

3: The game is skewed toward Heroes as a main gameplay element (IMO).

4: There is a gameplay gap in the least likely place (combat).

Therefore, a Position mechanic with the following aspects:

1: That which is in front protects that which is behind. (Block shots entirely, add own Defense score to protected object/Hero's, there are many ways to do this)

2: That which is in front gains a sensible bonus for staying there. (A melee hero might have increased damage, as an example. A ranged hero might have increased attack speed. These are naive concepts for front-line bonuses.)

3: That which is behind gains a sensible bonus for staying there. (Melee hero might have increased health regeneration, ranged hero might have increased damage. Again, naive concepts. There's room for improvement.)

4*: That which has its back to a door/enemy and gets attacked from behind loses both bonuses. (To make the player pay more attention to what is going on, and give them something to do even if they have an incredibly effective defense.)

* - This may not be compatible with their vision of the game, but I get the impression that it would be quite close.

Would have the following effects:

1: Less emphasis on turtling chokepoints and more on (riskier) front-line defense

2: More room for character differentiation (Perhaps Sara doesn't do well in a standard front line role -- but if you send her around to attack from behind...)

3: More room for module effects ("Heroes in the front line get x effect", etc.)

4: More room and flexibility for Hero Skills

5: A more balanced risk-reward model that correctly diminishes the effectiveness of "no risk" strategies without eliminating the psychological reward of gameplay entirely



---



Regarding the role of the crystal golems, personally I feel that the fact there is only one enemy of that type is a massive flaw all on its own; it's one slow moving avalanche of pain, and that's it. There needs to be a larger variety of them: can you imagine a swift, fragile one that darts between rooms as other enemies pile in, so it isn't targeted? Tension goes up rather quickly, unless you have enough industry stockpiled to defend every module you make (for some people/levels, that may be the case!).



In general it seems you've gotten me backwards. I have no problem with the Crystal Golems targeting structures and ignoring heroes, I just wish heroes being in the way mattered. Period. I have no problem with enemy variety, I wish there was more of it (enemies are very... samey right now). I'm pretty sure we're on the "same side" here.

Hi everybody and thank you for this interesting discussion!

I do think that we are on the same side

We will increase the difference between heroes / mobs / modules by improving the targeting and positioning AI, based on the behaviours of each and by diversifying these behaviours.

There will be some very simple "damage types" (like stun or dot) but don't worry, we will keep the high level approach of the game.

Sounds really good, Mysterarts!



I hope that hero skills also bring some diversity to "hero management". At the moment my playthroughs

always are a bit the same: establish some defenses around a choke point, move the heros into that

specific room and only use one hero to scout my path to the exit. Heros feel like mobile, stronger turrets at the

moment where there is no need to actually command more than one hero. Or at least I havn´t figured

a good use for the whole team at the moment.

Mysterarts wrote:
Hi everybody and thank you for this interesting discussion!

I do think that we are on the same side

We will increase the difference between heroes / mobs / modules by improving the targeting and positioning AI, based on the behaviours of each and by diversifying these behaviours.

There will be some very simple "damage types" (like stun or dot) but don't worry, we will keep the high level approach of the game.

Good to hear on the damage. I think stuff like stun or DoT is "general purpose" enough that you don't need to reassure us about it breaking anything!



If you're focusing on AI for stuff like positioning, it'd be a really good way of making the Heroes' personalities and psychoses shine through. Troe constantly rushing forward into suicidal combat situations when he's left alone, for example. Gork never moving an inch until told to move. Sara dipping in and out of combat (take a swing, retreat a bit). And so on and so forth.



It wouldn't be quite as strategic-level as the positioning I mentioned before, but it would emphasize the powder-keg atmosphere better, provide similar benefits, and help give the game the all-important "character", that undefinable entity that makes it interesting. The more stable characters would play to their strengths, the more unstable ones would play to their weaknesses. The player would find certain pairings/groups work well together due to their AI quirks matching up well. That's something that's too organic to be quantified easily (in a good way), and if you are going this route, is a good thing to have in mind.

Perhaps if you had some choice in a very limited selection of "behaviours" per hero - so each hero had a set of states that conferred a particular role in a rooms defense (meatshield, ranged dps, healer, buffer) or even (attack closest, attack weakest, block runners etc). Rather than having to interactively move heroes around to position them, they could set to follow a particular behaviour during defense. These behaviours could be varied based on the hero's current personality and backstory. Being able to tweak these settings before a wave, or during an attack, simply by flicking a state switch in the hero panel shouldn't be too twitchy and micro intensive, but would give you a finer level of control of the combat, and would hopefully feed into the lore/story emphasizing these characters foibles/quirks and bonuses, leading you to become attached to them, and care about keeping them alive.