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Can you please make this game fun again?

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Can you please make this game fun again?

Postby Kess on Mon Jan 23, 2012 4:01 pm

Long time lurker, first time poster.

While the topic may seem a bit harsh, that is sadly exactly how I feel :/. Im not trying to troll or anything here and Im posting in hopes that some people will take note.

I played the alpha a lot, and I was one out of a group of 4 friends who spent a lot of time on it. I was the only one out of the group that beat everything and unlocked everything. I loved the Vampire. He was so overpowered and it was so fun to play as him that I feelt that it was a just reward. Transmuter was also a favorite. I loved how you could find "game breaking combos" that would usually depend on getting 2-3 random elements in your favor. It was never obvious from the start that "this way" or "that way" would be the right angle and you had to experiment a fair bit.

The alpha was still really hard at times, but the kick I found when I had those random elements align to make me do what I set out to do was nothing less than awesome. It was what made that game great.

So I've been playing the beta for a while. It's hard and whenever I find some new tactic it seems to have been nerfed already. I've only unlocked Tinkerer and Transmuter thus far and they both play less fun than they did in the alpha. I think on the last few missions and I'm unable to do them. So I have to grind a lot of levels for cash that I can use while I fail at the real levels. The more you grind, the more you get slapped in the face with the taxidermist penalty so it takes longer and longer.

This is where I'm at now: http://imageshack.us/f/685/25826184.jpg/

And it really feels like you took away what made the game fun and replaced it with a lot of new mobs, most which are just beyond annoying.

It could be the way I play I guess, so let me give you an example of how I did my last run.

I've been trying Minecraft lately and my last run was with a Elf Paladin as I want a might & magic approach to it. Sensation stone, smugler's den, fireball, 50 gold, shop scroll and conversion seal. Once in I pop the conversion seal into the sensation stone. Set down the shop, it has a mana pot. Then I start clearing. Calculation fog to healing/mana as I work my way into the level. I always try kill stuff higher level than me, but on this level its tricky. I get the physical resist boss to about 30% and Im out of pots. I got to level 8, not close enough to 9 to push it that way and no mobs around worthwhile.

Now I see things that I could improve, but I have to grind 2 lesser dungeons first. It just feels more like a chore and not fun. I should point out that Im normally the kind of guy who will go 10 extra miles to min max something in games, but its sort of hard to know what items or such could have helped me here. In the alpha you had a better view over what you had to do in order to get new stuff. Here, I have no idea half the time. Heck, I still havent unlocked Mystera Annur, Dracul and Jehora Jeheyu. I've seen this drake mob that has 999 hp and seems invincible at times and I'm guessing that he is linked to one of those.

In short I find it hard to keep track over what I should and could be doing and when I find a fun way (or exploity) way to play the game as some would call it. It has been nerfed. Also the grind that Im forced to do is not fun at all in the long run.

I've read the forums a bit and it seems like you cater to the really hardcore players. Don't do that, its a horrible marked idea. People will ALWAYS find a way to break a game and if you make the game based on these people, then it will be a really boring game for the rest of us.

-Kess
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Re: Can you please make this game fun again?

Postby gjaustin on Mon Jan 23, 2012 5:01 pm

The 999 hp dragon is for Mystera. He's a puzzle. If you can get past him (there are actually four solutions) you'll unlock Mystera. JJ is dependent on unlocking Mystera and Dracul is in the same dungeon as GG.

Also, I think you'll find that a lot of the hardcore players will agree with you on at least a few of your points. I especially dislike the Weakening and Counter Fireball monsters since they just seem mean.
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Re: Can you please make this game fun again?

Postby Fran on Mon Jan 23, 2012 5:06 pm

Welcome to the forums!

Although I understand/have been through the most of what you're saying (except for being good at the alpha), the game is in a constant state of rebalancing at the moment so it's not supposed to be this frustrating.
Your best bet would propably be to do the quest "Oh Horatio" first, as this will fix your economy. In fact, this is supposed to be the official end to the maingame. Therefore, you will get much more money for the throphies afterwards and the grind will almost vanish, at least then you can get +1000 gold per run.
The vicious dungeons are meant to be tackled afterwards and are not balanced at the moment. This is not how they are supposed to be in the endgame, so don't worry about that.
Last edited by Fran on Mon Jan 23, 2012 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Can you please make this game fun again?

Postby Lujo on Mon Jan 23, 2012 5:11 pm

Also, the bunch of exploity ways were making it hard for the testers and the team to truly measure how difficult the dungeons are, and taking the exploits out first will probably lead to making the challenges a bit (or quite a bit) easier along the course of a few updates. Either that, or you'll get the exploits back, or even both ^^
I almost got pwned by Shifty Brickwork!
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Re: Can you please make this game fun again?

Postby xspeedballx on Mon Jan 23, 2012 5:48 pm

Lujo is correct. It was stated a while back when the vicious dungeons started cropping up that they were designed to be extremely difficult to be able to identify the truely degenerate strategies. Now that a lot of those have been nerfed you can probably expect to see reductions in difficulty again so that more fine tuning can be made on existing balance.

All of that said, there is something to be said for overpowered reward classes for achieving some of the pinnacles in a game(any game). Especially something that makes you play differently than normal and is powerful. Which I think is why the original vampire was so great, it rewarded exploring everything first, and then was just brutal it was fun to play because it turned the game on it's side.

Same thing with the original transmuter. It turned some of the most claustraphobic dungeons into a killing spree.

Based on what I can see and some responses the devs have provided they have a keen eye on "fun" vs "hardcore". However, I don't think it will ever be there intention to just provide a process of just breezing through the entire game. Instead they want to promote diverse strategies for diverse dungeons. And likely through eventual puzzle tutorials shine a light on what kind of strategies to start with for those situations.

With all of that said, and idea came into my head: In the eventual UI overhaul can we consider providing a list and maybe stats for all the monsters we can expect to find in a dungeon. Or a list and possibly a bestiary in game(realize that is a decent undertaking.) So that the concept of planning can be done with a little less pain?
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Re: Can you please make this game fun again?

Postby TigerKnee on Mon Jan 23, 2012 5:56 pm

I'm not quite sure how you find the Tinker "less fun". His McGuyver kit gives him a bit more flexibility beyond his base gimmick of "can buy a lot of stuff"

Then as far as Transmuter goes... well, I don't know. This is like his 4th rework? There MUST be some way to have an interesting class who can use EndIsWal as a gimmick without being completely overpowered on certain levels and weak on others but I don't know what it is.

Addressing the topic title. The question: what is "fun" for you? This seems to be a difficulty issue, so here is my take.

For me, both extremes of "Gotta reload this stage 30 more times to spawn the perfect item/glyph/god combination" (I rather have a more "spontaneous" game) and "Well, I killed the boss and still have 75% of my resources available" (because then it's not a puzzle game, it's just going through the motions) is not fun for me.

Adjusting the difficulty in either direction means breaking the balance for different groups of people, and thus I can't address it much compared to say, having problems with specific design philosophy.
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Re: Can you please make this game fun again?

Postby dislekcia on Mon Jan 23, 2012 6:27 pm

Hi Kess, thanks for signing up to be heard :)

Yup, we're aware of the relative volume issue: Those that are really into the lategame are going to be louder in their complaints and issues than players that just load up the game every once in a while to see what's changed. Ideally we'd like as much feedback from the quietest people, that would be awesome.

As far as balance goes, we're still poking and prodding at things - although there's definitely a feeling of "we're finally hitting the stuff we've wanted to work on for ages now" at the moment, so hopefully we're not introducing more and more problems into the game with each update. Dungeon difficulty will come down, there are a number of ways that we were talking about that today. There are also changes to how the gods are unlocked that we're messing with on our side, but suffice to say that we want these interesting strategies to still exist, we just don't want them to be dependable for every run (they should be more like an awesome easter egg that you found because you're clever) nor do we want to force players to HAVE to use one of those powerful combos in order to beat a dungeon. We're trying to explore a reactive play-space, not one that requires pre-planning.

There will also probably be optional difficulty ups in the game eventually, just to cater for those players that want to scum for hardcore strats ;)
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Re: Can you please make this game fun again?

Postby Kess on Mon Jan 23, 2012 7:11 pm

Oh man.. You're all nice and helpful.. Now I feel like a jerk for seeming angry and raging :(.

Thanks for all the replies. The basis for my frustration was "not knowing what to do" and it made me stuck while wiping over and over on those quests that you see there since around x-mas.

But yeah you should probably cut some of the more "mean" mobs while working on a way to push people like me in the right direction. Achievements tend to do this on other games and you could also mark quests differently. Like say having black quest flags on stuff that is not that important/side quests and keep the red ones for whats important.

As for having achievements/some sort of tracking. It would be helpful knowing what is out there, but not how to obtain it. Im sure this is very individual, but for me at least this is a carrot and was one of the things I loved about the alpha. Examples would be knowing if you had 2/9 gods or if your bazaar was level 2/5. (random numbers)

Also the tinkerer is fun, dont get me wrong. But I havent really found a use for him here. The game is kind of brutal where Im at. The new stuff that he offers is quite cool yes. In this spot in the alpha you could bring the transmuter and he could tear havoc to a lot of the maps. Balanced? Maybe not, but it gave me hour upon hour with gameplay just runing around and doing the hard stuff with him. Same with the Vampire, did I mention how much I loved the vampire? Vampire was awesome..

Tikki Tokki has also brought me a lot of frustration lately. While it is probably my favored god, it seems like you get to a point where if you have some bad luck on the map he will punish you. Once or twice would be fine, but it feels as if this happens every other run where I pick that god. Again this could be due to where I am in the game right now. TT is the kind of god that you need to get early on so you can really explore that much before making the choice.

-Kess
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Re: Can you please make this game fun again?

Postby Fran on Mon Jan 23, 2012 7:14 pm

That's great to hear dislekcia, and sounds like a good way to please different types of gamers all the same.
By the way, are there certain topics where we can help you by making suggestions, instead of just making overall suggestions everywhere?
I mean we're suggesting things all the time, but I'm mostly not sure if those are things you haven't already worked on.
Is there something you really want to hear our opinions about, besides the overall game?
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Re: Can you please make this game fun again?

Postby gjaustin on Mon Jan 23, 2012 7:27 pm

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