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QCF Design Community • View topic - Random notes while playing the Beta so far (spoilers)


Random notes while playing the Beta so far (spoilers)

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Random notes while playing the Beta so far (spoilers)

Postby metroid composite on Tue Aug 02, 2011 3:13 am

I'm not too far in yet; I've unlocked like...seven classes.

The pacing...feels slow. In the original, you beat a dungeon, you unlock a class. Here, it's more like once every two dungeons, or once every three dungeons. (Notably, there's 3x easy dungeons with goat bosses, and each goat horn has diminishing returns when sold). And...once I did start unlocking level 2 classes, the Eastern Jungle, Southern Swamp, Western Tundra, and Northern Desert open up--all of which have a mission involving level 1 classes, so I feel obligated to use the level 1 classes again instead of the shiny level 2 class I just unlocked.

Speaking of those four dungeons, I've only played Northern Desert so far, but...at a glance, I suspect it's 120% stat enemies, and it feels like it might have fewer enemies than normal. I don't know if this is meant to be a challenge dungeon, but it feels...harder than expected given what I have unlocked. A lot of the murder-bait enemies like Bandits and Goats weren't unlocked for me, and some harder to kill enemies are mixed into that dungeon (trolls) so the "low stat" enemy I killed to level up were like...120% stats Goblins. The power runes weren't unlocked (poison, healing, cydstepp, and to some degree bludtopowa). There weren't really shops on the map (well...there was one, with a plot item). I mean, I was able to win by starting on the boss at level 6 and using a mid-battle-level-up, but something tells me this dungeon might be harder than intended given that it seems to assume just tier 1 classes unlocked? (For comparison purposes, I'd peg it as probably around Freeware Boss Hive difficulty?)

Now, if you discussed amongst yourselves and decided that Desktop Dungeons was just way too easy, then more power to you; ignore the above paragraph. Alternatively, maybe my town management skills suck, and I should enter the dungeon with great preparations. Just thought I'd make a note of it.

Hm, something else I've noticed about how I play...in the Freeware, when I first played, I looked at what the races did, and then stuck to Human for the first 40 or so games. (Eventually I branched out, of course). But I'm...really falling back into that old "Human every time" pattern this time given that I have to buy the race unlocks, and given that there's other stuff I'm more excited about unlocking (like classes). This might just be a playstyle thing, granted (anyone else find themselves ignoring the class unlocks in favour of other upgrades?) One other note on the races: before upgrading to get the race, it doesn't actually tell you what the race does; it's a mystery to new players! Compare this to classes, where even with a level 1 guild I can mouse-over the greyed-out Warlord and see what the class does. Are the race windows going to have preview information eventually?
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Re: Random notes while playing the Beta so far (spoilers)

Postby TigerKnee on Tue Aug 02, 2011 3:19 am

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Re: Random notes while playing the Beta so far (spoilers)

Postby q 3 on Tue Aug 02, 2011 3:23 am

I agree that the race upgrades are too expensive. Maybe if their dwellings added other features...
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Re: Random notes while playing the Beta so far (spoilers)

Postby dislekcia on Tue Aug 02, 2011 3:29 am

This is the sort of stuff we're having the beta to cover. Race unlocks not telling you what you're going to get is a big one, seems far too obvious for us to have actually straight-out missed... But we did ;)
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Re: Random notes while playing the Beta so far (spoilers)

Postby aguydude on Tue Aug 02, 2011 4:05 am

My own random notes:

1. This was mentioned during the last release, but it's kind of frustrating that there is no way (or not one that I could figure out) to mouse-over the enemy information. Maybe just have an extra row of tabs for any adjacent enemies?

2. There is no obvious way to cancel a spell in mid-cast, though there are non-obvious ways to do so.

3. Glowing Guardian's Humility boon is broken. The initial potion supply is enough to give a starting piety boost, and constant hits of humility mean a player will end up constantly leveling up (and gaining piety for courage in the process). Cheap level-ups more than offsets it slow regeneration, especially with how easy it is to earn piety. Hitting 100 piety is rather easy, but Enlightenment isn't even that exciting when your character is effectively level 15+ and happily getting easy healing via protection. Maybe if its cost increased by 5 each use it would be less broken...but even then Glowing Guardian would probably still be way overpowered.

4. Switching between upgrading the castle and preparing to enter a dungeon was confusing the first time it happened.

5. Seeing items that can be put into lockers while preparing to enter a dungeon is very counterintuitive.

6. It's very annoying that I cannot see my item choices for a dungeon roll-out until I click on a specific building.

7. I wish I could see if a slot was magical, physical, or both even when an item was in it.
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Re: Random notes while playing the Beta so far (spoilers)

Postby Billychu on Tue Aug 02, 2011 4:14 am

Right clicking cancels spells.
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Re: Random notes while playing the Beta so far (spoilers)

Postby Blunglin on Tue Aug 02, 2011 5:14 am

Hey this part of game dev is easy, complaining about the hard work of others!

The tutorial was hilarious! However, I wanted the ability to kill myself by attacking a monster after being warned, and start over... because it would have been even more hilarious.

I clicked the icon tutorial 3, saw the village view, and didn't know what to do. I found a couple of small icons (human guard portrait and one other, human?) that overlaid village and clicked those to enter dungeon.
Also seen after clicking tut. 4 icon. I'm guessing that the race/class selection menu background does not draw, and instead I am seeing only the icons for human/fighter. I believe the text was displayed for those icons

I sorely miss being able to move with the arrow keys, as I have repetitive stress injury and a hard luck story. Also, I'd like to be able to hit ENTER as an alternative to SPACE to confirm, as I dislike learning new things.

SPACE does not trigger the “Exit” button in a post-dungeon score screen as expected. Since the Exit button has the same appearance as the previous buttons that accepted SPACE to confirm, I expect the Exit button to accept SPACE to confirm, even if I skip through my beloved score screen.

It would be great if I could alt-tab out of full screen, then alt-tab back to it, instead of having the game revert to windowed.

The loading screen and menu buttons could use some love from an artist. Or, a big sticker that reads “FINAL ART”

It would be nice if the village screen was accompanied by some ambient sounds: birds, water flowing, hammers hitting anvils, drunken yelling, etc.

I felt something sink in my stomach when I read my first QUEST COMPLETE. Am I in for another WoW or Puzzle Quest or whatever RPG grindfest? I don’t mind, as long as you don’t tell me with QUEST COMPLETE.

I converted a glyph when I had enough to go to the next conversion level, but I have no idea what I gained from this. It would be nice to see something light up or animate to clue me in.

When I beat the level 5 goat in tutorial 4, the screen flashed white. This seemed like a very interesting visual idea, but was unfinished, and needed some effects to sell it.

The blood pools and footprints on the ground in the dungeon look like they could use some additional love from an artist, maybe some additional shading?

It would be nice if the black squares animated as they disappeared, or otherwise had some additional artist love. Since this is a central mechanic that really makes this game, I would love to see it be more appealing visually.

I'd be happy to attach my DxDiag output (system specs in detail), but I don't see a way to attach files in this forum.

-Blunglin
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Re: Random notes while playing the Beta so far (spoilers)

Postby MaxEd on Tue Aug 02, 2011 6:01 am

A few things that bug me:

1) On my big monitor, everything looks a bit small, and there is no way to scale it, like it was possible in Alpha. I understand that this is a limitation of Unity, but can't it be worked around somehow? I won't mind a little scaling artefacts, if only everything would be BIGGER!

2) Buttons placement and look on the main Kingdom screen reeks of amateur UI design :( It's just... Wrong, really. Especially when a new button appears. I really hope this isn't final, it can really use more polish.

3) I had a small, but important problem with dungeon size: you can't gauge it at all! If this is intentional, this is a bad decision. If it is not - please, draw a border around dungeon, so player can see how many squares he has left until he hits the wall.

4) Where do I turn sound off?

These are things that irked me at the first glance, everything else seems not too bad so far. Although I must say that enabling new races/classes via special feats, like in Alpha, was more satisfying than buying them. You felt you really were getting awards for good performance, not just for persistence.
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Re: Random notes while playing the Beta so far (spoilers)

Postby Carl on Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:21 am

A puzzle editor would be awesome! That way users could create puzzle situations for other users, thereby generating infinite content :P

Another issue with puzzles is the toss-up between regen and randomness. By giving regen you are blocking out tiles that the player then doesn't know, creating possible randomness in exploration. To combat this I think that puzzles should be able to include regen by 'revealing' unexplored regen blocks (possibly as a slightly duller version of actuals). That way the playere can gain regen by revealing these blocks in the usual way while still knowing exactly how the map is laid out, if you know what I mean. The use of regen will definitely add a lot of complexity to the puzzles. (p.s. not sure if this is actually done in later puzzles, I've only completed the first puzzle pack).
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Re: Random notes while playing the Beta so far (spoilers)

Postby metroid composite on Tue Aug 02, 2011 2:13 pm

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