First of all, I'd like to say that I like the game, especially for the innovative game mechanics.



In my last run I found the exit, but continued to open doors, because i had a high defense and quite a lot of generators, so I had ~40 food per door. The waves were hard accordingly, but still manageable. Unfortunately some of the fat, exploding mobs decided to group up and run into my Opbot. I could literally do nothing to save him because even when healed to full health the mobs exploded simultaneously and killed him in one shot. What added to the frustration was that I didnt lack defenses or food, but the turrets & heroes just attacked the wrong mobs in this case.

My suggestions:

-Change the damage of the exploding mobs to a percentage of the current health instead of an absolute amount. It would still be a huge chunk, but if there are 3 of them you wouldn't be helpless. I know rogue-likes are also about luck, but in my opinion this is just unfair, and I think deaths should occur from mistakes or being too greedy.

-Another way to solve this would be to allow custom targeting priorities, so I could tell my turrets to focus down the exploding mobs first. This could also open up more tactical depth, if you could for example kill the mobs going for your crystal last, so you minimize the damage on your heroes, then clean them up with a second line of turrets or your door opening hero.



In the same run I later had a Pro-module-stele (+80% turret damage, -50% hero damage) and due to some door opening mobs ended up with multiple fully charged keepers. I'm not going to complain about the game being unfair again, quite the opposite. I think the keepers are not challenging enough because even when fully charged, I can just run in with hikensha and kill them solo. And even with the stele debuff they were no problem at all, because they will stay in their room forever and didn't obstruct my path to the exit. I just built some autodoc shards to heal my heroes back up between waves and carried on without killing the keepers. While this solution was the most efficient, it didn't feel satisfying, because I could just circumvent game mechanics.

My suggestions:

-Buff the keepers so you need more than one hero for a fully charged one.

-Make them give a floor-wide debuff on FIDS so you can't just ignore them.



What in my opinion is also quite unbalanced is the research. If you can't get your hands on any FIDS-generation upgrades the game becomes ridiculously hard, if you get multiple upgrades in succession, the game becomes too easy.

My suggestions:

-Nerf FIDS-generators by increasing the price of the upgraded ones.

-Allow some targeted research by adding something like a research module, which allows for reseach similiar to that of Endless ruins, but requires an operating hero and has higher science costs.

Hi,



Thanks for your feedback!

I really appreciate how you expose problems then suggestions, which are really pertinent. You should already expect to see some of them in next updates

Nerf dust-generating mechanics like Max O'Kane's pilfer or the shop:

In my opinion dust generation is too strong. If you have enough passive dust generation you can light every single room, and not fight any mobs at all, which is a strong strategy but it also makes the game boring. My idea would be to let some monsters crawl through some unopened doors into lit rooms, if there are no dark rooms which could let them spawn or to change the game mechanics so a player can only get additional dust when killing mobs, similiar to Golgy's pickpocket ability of the Warden's war profiteer ability. That way the player can't just light all the rooms and fight no mobs at all.



Increase the amount of random events in the game:

While this may sound counterproductive to lowering the frustration due to chance, this would actually lower it. If there were for example six upgrades per module instead of three (with adjusted research time and cost, and the maximum strength unchanged), the probability of consistent luck or unluck would decrease, while the probability of average luck would increase. It's much likelier to get three bad reseach options in a row than it is to get six in a row.



Add an option to reroll research:

If there was a way to get new research options instead of researching one of those options presented, for example by using some of your science to get new options, or simply by randomizing the research after each opened door, the probability of extreme luck or unluck would once again decrease due to a higher amount of events. If I remember correctly it is planned to enable the purchase of blueprints from merchants, but that would make dust even more valuable than it is currently, further forcing players to pick dust-heavy heroes.



Add a per-turn probability for merchants to sell items in their inventory:

In the current state of the game there is basically no advantage to intantly buying items if you find a merchant. The optimal course of action is usually to wait until all doors have been opened, then buy some items, since the dust won't carry over anyways. I would like item purchases to be an actual decision, instead of presents you receive at the end of the floor, as long as you keep the merchant alive. Therefore my suggestion is to add a per turn probability for merchants to sell items in their inventory, so players will have to decide whether to risk more mob spawns or to risk losing the item they might need. Of course this introduces randomness into the game, which i criticized earlier, but if the player has a choice whether or not to take chances, I think a death would feel less frustrating, because it would feel more like the reason for failure was the player's own greed instead of outside influences.



Improve balancing in general:

Though this is probably the hardest thing to do, it would in my opinion also be the most rewarding. If all heroes were almost equally good, you wouldn't feel pressured to take certain heroes. Especially if this game gets a competitive multiplayer, I would like it to have multiple strategies with about the same strength. For example Golgy Phurtiver is just all-around better than Sara Numas, and I see no reason why I would pick Sara over Golgy. An analogy would be League of Legends: There are some champions which are fun to play, but also bad at winning games, so the amount of viable champions is actually lower than the amount of champions in total. I don't think it would be quite as bad in DotE, since this game's primary focus is not on competition, but i would still like all heroes to be viable.