Concise Midgame Feedback Writeup
Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 6:39 am
EARLY MIDGAME:
End of "early game" had me at all the kingdom buildings except the final level of blacksmith, and the 3rd tier class unlocks. I counted Early Midgame as the perid untill I had all of the 3rd tier classes unlocked.
Early Game Writeup Here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2421
GAMEFLOW/QUESTS:
The unlock prerequisite wierdness for various questlines gets really messy here for various reasons.
Issue No. 1: The Witch Her quest appears too early for newbies to be able to tackle Creeplight Ruins (it's early game), and then she took quite a bit of Tinker scumming, which I feel should be avoided if possible. It also points people east rather than west, and strongly so. I've thought about it quite a bit, and unless the availability of the Burn Salve related to EM desecration is the problem - her unlock quest and subdungeon should probably move to Southern Swamp. It would add a degree of challenge to a Southern Swamp run and foreshadow Ick, and be much less disruptive alltogather. Since the inital complicated tasks quests take place in the first directional dungeons, this gives the player incentive to play them out some more before moving on (instead of backtracking).
Issue No. 2: There are no quests in Slime Pits or Cursed Oasis. Magma Mines and Berserker Camp, however have 2 quests each. Apart from grabing the +8% charm, unless someone really needs one of the trophies, there is no incentive to go there.
New: Issue No. 2.5: This is further made odd by the fact that there are 2 quests in Magma Mines and Berserker Camp, respectively. Move the "complete with 4 classes quests" north and south or make new ones? Please?
Issue No.3: The Blacksmith unlock can happen significantly late in the game for no apparent reason.
Issue No. 4: GETINDARE abuse (use?) can get players a veto slot really, really early, through Thief, Rogue and Assasin challenges. Paladin silver challenge, and Berserker gold have uncovery of vicious dungeons as a prerequisite, which is at odds with every other class. For the Paladin it's glaring because it's the only silver challenge that requires it, and for the Berserker it's glaring because it requires the northern vicious dungeon to be unlocked. Simply changing tilesets and monster names/art for these challenges could straighten things out, otherwise you might consider restricting other class chalenges by state of game progression in a more standardized way.
Issue No. 5: The "Challenge" subdungeon which exists in the South, and is mandatory for Ick Swamp to unlock, doesn't have it's counterparts in the other directions and gives not clue about what you need to do before it spawns somewhere. It should either be removed, be moved in status to a "VICIOUS invite" subdungeon and/or there should be ones like it for each direction. I'd also recommend a "search the subdungeons in X for Y" rewardless quest for this kind of interlude.
Issue No. 6: The Northern Dessert doesn't have a fixed boss spawn, but the kingdom tooltip acts like it does. You can get either Aequitas or Goo Blob listed as boss, and as often as not the wrong one will spawn. I suppose this should be fixed, prefferably by removing the Goo spawn. It would also give more incentive to venture into the slime pit.
Issue No. 7: Tinker, Transmuter and Crusader need questlines of some sort. It would alleviate any gold problems newbies (will) have if theyre ment to purchase the 3rd tier classes on time, as they would have more class completions per dungeon, and likely more badges.
Issue No. 8: Hero's Helm is in a really weird place for a begginer unlock. By the time someone gets it, it probably won't be used much.
New:
Issue No. 9: Note: "Playthrough ????? I've had a cluster**** of toasts happen after defeating the Havendale Bridge (By coincidence it seems). Magma Mines Minecraft, Transmuter, Bezar lvl 3, and the Taxidermist notes, at least. There seemed to be two identical notes for Bezar lvl 3 but with different tags."
Issue No. 10: Note: Gameflow Issue - It just occured to me that there is a thing about locker slots which might warrant consideration. The way they are distributed now is that you get 3 for unlocking the berserker, and 3 for Warlord, and those two aren't exactly the unlocks you want to rush as far as monsters are concerned, yet unlock the Trisword Challenge, the Unlikely Heroe's questline and the Sensation Stone dungeon. On the flipside, if you don't unlock the berserker right away you have no locker slots. I suppose redistributing the slot unlocks to be 2 + 2 + 2 would allow some item lockering right away (like it used to be), but would let you locker the sensation stone in the midgame. Fewer locker slots - fewer strats people feel really comfortable with, and while asking for more locker slots would be silly, asking for a redistribution probably isn't (to allow more diversity and experimentation in the late early game, and early midgame, especially for the item dependent classes).
GODS:
Well, I used all of them at various points, but Taurog was my most prepped one due to straightforwardness, gold independent items he provides and a really, really non-existant prep penalty in most situations. Most other ones I didn't prep at all.
Issue No. 1: Unlocking the 2nd tier classes is a prerequisite for unlocking the HARD directional dungeons, but is also a prerequisite for unlocking 2nd tier gods once you pick the 1st tier ones up. This leads to situations where TT spawns in the Suthern Swamp. I thought he was supposed to be behind a skill wall? Was this intentional?
Issue No. 2: Find Odd: i just desecrated Taurog and he didn't take away his gear. Wonder if it was always like that or not? Bug thread material?
INTERFACE:
Issue No. 1: There really should be a way to cycle between your badges and classes in a particular dungeon, and that info should also be available in the dungeon itself. It's rather important when you: choose your next run, prep for your run, play your run. And right now you have to wait untill the panels cycle, hurry up to mouseover while the badge screen is up (they all look the same), and past that point a notebook is your best bet.
Issue No. 2: I have a note saying: "Minor Itch: Am I blind or is there no way to see your quests once you click on a flag on the map?" Later it sayes: "Maybe I'm just blind. And some of it at least is probably being worked on right now...", probably because the dev's are working on graphical and interface stuff.
ART:
Issue No. 1 Note: "Like - Transmuter Subdungeon Keyword: "Quest" The subdungeon art is a mite excessive, however. If you find it in a darker subdungeon, like the Havendale Bridge and your screen suddenly flashes orange the reaction is "Bleh!" not "Wow"." I really mean it, there's what, 1 dungeon where the orange screen doesn't come off as jarring, and that's Magma Mines.
Ok, that's it for the Early-Mid game. Now for:
MIDGAME PROPER:
Everything but the gold challenges, the Paladin Silver challenge (was locked due to needing Dragon Isles unlocked for no obvious reason), and the final directional quests (and 4 final throphies).
ITEMS:
Generally I've used everything but the Fire Heart at some point, and I might even use it if I turn to healthmonsters. Truly, besides the weird unlock prerequisites such as the Hero's Helm has (in relation to gold required to unlock the quest), I'm having trouble deciding what to fill my veto slots with. You guys really made a lot of stuff work.
Issue No.1 - the Mas09 ledger is easily acquireable, lockerable, has a very cheap activation and prep cost and is on par if not more powerfull than most VICIOUS rewards. It's probably the most powerful item in the game and needs somethign done to it ASAP.
Issue No. 2 - the other guys, Avatar in particular, have expressed a desire to have all the subdungeon items be lockerable, even if it means adjusting their effects and power level so that it makes sense. Darvin even stated that Draco's heart isn't even too powerful. I don't know what to think exactly, except that having a "locker only" items category might be fun, but it has to be uniform.
Issue No. 3 It's not clear whether you can both locker and veto an item. Some people have expressed desire to have this option.
New: (Friday)
Issue No. 4: I've cmpletely changed my mind about Crystall Ball. The viability of the wizard seems to be directly tied to autoprepping it. I'm not sure what to think - i was devastating the game with spellcasters last time around and never touched it. This time around it's an auto-prep, and i'll see what the game looks like without it once I start testing the Mage Fist. What it does is let spellcasters explore almost the entire map and waste a ton of blackspace and still be able to spike 2 bosses. B2P is at least anti-synergistic with schadenfraude, this isn't.
QUESTS:
Unlikely Heroes: turned up out of a random comment about Venture Cave not having proper questlines and became the heart and soul of the midgame. It was awesome, just what hard is supposed to be. However, the race/class choices were a bit weird, and there seemed to be no Paladin or Sorcerer represented, but the monk and the wizard turned up twice. Since the wizard also turns up in the Grimm's Grotto quest, I think that he's being needlessly forced.
SUBDUNGEONS:
Issue No. 1 - some of the boys and I decided we'd really like a "conversion fodder" subdungeon as a "can spawn anywhere" one. We made a thread about it.
Issue No. 2 - The Cha Dylan subdungeon seems to appear noticably more often than any other subdungeon. It's awesome the first time around, but gets tiresome after a while (the size of it, yet the relative lack of content in it opposed to the level from which you descend makes it a bit of a subconcious dissapointment. Psych at work there.)
Issue No. 3 - Saint Solitude Subdungeon Is another subdungeon where you can score a LEMISI glyph. The fact that it and Cha Dylan have overlapping spawn areas is a bit puzzling.
Issue No. 3 - Venus Patrol subdungeon rewards seemed quite a bit too good. I like the fact that piety as a resource is getting used more though
CLASSES:
I liked the Assasin nerfs, and I liked the Paladin nerfs. Monk nerfs also did a good job of making him very tricky in unfavourable maps. However:
Issue No. 1 The Berserker is noticably struggling outside of very favourable maps.
Issue No. 2 The Warlord is an engine of destruction. He needs nerfs, no joke. He still has Ye Brokene Olde Cydstepp and practicaly the Rogue bonus on top of it. I suppose nerfung his %buffs to 25% each might do the trick, but the fact is that I noticed a big difference between him and everybody else and I wasn't even using the trisword which he has incredible synergy with. Take also into account all the VICIOUS runs the Darvin's been making, and please do something.
Issue No. 2 The Bloodmage is frankly even more powerfull. He was the star of my last playthrough, and then, at the very end, he got buffed. Whether it's the current B2P or the BM in general I don't know, but I don't think anyone can beat him for the level difference between hero and target monster, by a long shot (in otherwise reasonable circumatances).
GLYPHS:
Well, I've used all of them at some point or another. Adding APHEELSICK to my repertiore scored me a lot of wins, IMAWAL was just great this time around (underused, more than underpowered, but could still use cost decrese maybe). HALPMEH isn't what it used to be, but it's still good with regen fighters, and WHEYTWUT I don't know what to think of. The 3rd tier GLYPHS unlocks actually cause a difficulty spike on the grounds that GETINDARE stops being an almost guaranteed spawn.
Issue No. 1 The operating principles behing PISSORF are obscure to say the least. It's integral to the midgame, it synergizes with Orcs, Tri-Sword, Mage Plate, but none of this is obvious. It needs a tutorial that appears sooner than you get to complete all the spellcasting gold challenges (which are all one big PISSORFF tutorial, as far as I've seen). It needs a clearer tooltip (standardize the effect to save tooltip space, maybe, and make sure that even the village idiot can understand that -% damage doesn't affect it).
New (Friday):
Issue No. 2 The CYDSTEPP that everyone is using and the CYDSTEPP the Warlord is using aren't the same glyph. It's possible that the general purpose one could cost a bit less. I've been using it, and the effect is powerfull, to be sure, but the nature of the glyph prevents overuse, it can't be prepped, and having it (and IMAWAL also maybe) could let us combine it's use with a utility glyph, or help Berserkers out (they're allready struggling compared to others).
GODS:
Issue No. 1 If Pactmaker could be made to work in a way where you could choose a pact before you pick consensus, then by all means, please make it so. One missclick there can cause all calculations to break down. Also if Alchemy Pact won't be touched, can we please get a clear clarification on why not?
And that's all for now, I'm tired as hell, and I hope the dev's get a chance to go through this, and if they find stuff they agree on and is easy to get in there before the break to do so. If not, well, it was a fun playthrough and I think many of these are sensible and needed polishing touches. Challenges writeup coming along one of these days.
End of "early game" had me at all the kingdom buildings except the final level of blacksmith, and the 3rd tier class unlocks. I counted Early Midgame as the perid untill I had all of the 3rd tier classes unlocked.
Early Game Writeup Here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2421
GAMEFLOW/QUESTS:
The unlock prerequisite wierdness for various questlines gets really messy here for various reasons.
Issue No. 1: The Witch Her quest appears too early for newbies to be able to tackle Creeplight Ruins (it's early game), and then she took quite a bit of Tinker scumming, which I feel should be avoided if possible. It also points people east rather than west, and strongly so. I've thought about it quite a bit, and unless the availability of the Burn Salve related to EM desecration is the problem - her unlock quest and subdungeon should probably move to Southern Swamp. It would add a degree of challenge to a Southern Swamp run and foreshadow Ick, and be much less disruptive alltogather. Since the inital complicated tasks quests take place in the first directional dungeons, this gives the player incentive to play them out some more before moving on (instead of backtracking).
Issue No. 2: There are no quests in Slime Pits or Cursed Oasis. Magma Mines and Berserker Camp, however have 2 quests each. Apart from grabing the +8% charm, unless someone really needs one of the trophies, there is no incentive to go there.
New: Issue No. 2.5: This is further made odd by the fact that there are 2 quests in Magma Mines and Berserker Camp, respectively. Move the "complete with 4 classes quests" north and south or make new ones? Please?
Issue No.3: The Blacksmith unlock can happen significantly late in the game for no apparent reason.
Issue No. 4: GETINDARE abuse (use?) can get players a veto slot really, really early, through Thief, Rogue and Assasin challenges. Paladin silver challenge, and Berserker gold have uncovery of vicious dungeons as a prerequisite, which is at odds with every other class. For the Paladin it's glaring because it's the only silver challenge that requires it, and for the Berserker it's glaring because it requires the northern vicious dungeon to be unlocked. Simply changing tilesets and monster names/art for these challenges could straighten things out, otherwise you might consider restricting other class chalenges by state of game progression in a more standardized way.
Issue No. 5: The "Challenge" subdungeon which exists in the South, and is mandatory for Ick Swamp to unlock, doesn't have it's counterparts in the other directions and gives not clue about what you need to do before it spawns somewhere. It should either be removed, be moved in status to a "VICIOUS invite" subdungeon and/or there should be ones like it for each direction. I'd also recommend a "search the subdungeons in X for Y" rewardless quest for this kind of interlude.
Issue No. 6: The Northern Dessert doesn't have a fixed boss spawn, but the kingdom tooltip acts like it does. You can get either Aequitas or Goo Blob listed as boss, and as often as not the wrong one will spawn. I suppose this should be fixed, prefferably by removing the Goo spawn. It would also give more incentive to venture into the slime pit.
Issue No. 7: Tinker, Transmuter and Crusader need questlines of some sort. It would alleviate any gold problems newbies (will) have if theyre ment to purchase the 3rd tier classes on time, as they would have more class completions per dungeon, and likely more badges.
Issue No. 8: Hero's Helm is in a really weird place for a begginer unlock. By the time someone gets it, it probably won't be used much.
New:
Issue No. 9: Note: "Playthrough ????? I've had a cluster**** of toasts happen after defeating the Havendale Bridge (By coincidence it seems). Magma Mines Minecraft, Transmuter, Bezar lvl 3, and the Taxidermist notes, at least. There seemed to be two identical notes for Bezar lvl 3 but with different tags."
Issue No. 10: Note: Gameflow Issue - It just occured to me that there is a thing about locker slots which might warrant consideration. The way they are distributed now is that you get 3 for unlocking the berserker, and 3 for Warlord, and those two aren't exactly the unlocks you want to rush as far as monsters are concerned, yet unlock the Trisword Challenge, the Unlikely Heroe's questline and the Sensation Stone dungeon. On the flipside, if you don't unlock the berserker right away you have no locker slots. I suppose redistributing the slot unlocks to be 2 + 2 + 2 would allow some item lockering right away (like it used to be), but would let you locker the sensation stone in the midgame. Fewer locker slots - fewer strats people feel really comfortable with, and while asking for more locker slots would be silly, asking for a redistribution probably isn't (to allow more diversity and experimentation in the late early game, and early midgame, especially for the item dependent classes).
GODS:
Well, I used all of them at various points, but Taurog was my most prepped one due to straightforwardness, gold independent items he provides and a really, really non-existant prep penalty in most situations. Most other ones I didn't prep at all.
Issue No. 1: Unlocking the 2nd tier classes is a prerequisite for unlocking the HARD directional dungeons, but is also a prerequisite for unlocking 2nd tier gods once you pick the 1st tier ones up. This leads to situations where TT spawns in the Suthern Swamp. I thought he was supposed to be behind a skill wall? Was this intentional?
Issue No. 2: Find Odd: i just desecrated Taurog and he didn't take away his gear. Wonder if it was always like that or not? Bug thread material?
INTERFACE:
Issue No. 1: There really should be a way to cycle between your badges and classes in a particular dungeon, and that info should also be available in the dungeon itself. It's rather important when you: choose your next run, prep for your run, play your run. And right now you have to wait untill the panels cycle, hurry up to mouseover while the badge screen is up (they all look the same), and past that point a notebook is your best bet.
Issue No. 2: I have a note saying: "Minor Itch: Am I blind or is there no way to see your quests once you click on a flag on the map?" Later it sayes: "Maybe I'm just blind. And some of it at least is probably being worked on right now...", probably because the dev's are working on graphical and interface stuff.
ART:
Issue No. 1 Note: "Like - Transmuter Subdungeon Keyword: "Quest" The subdungeon art is a mite excessive, however. If you find it in a darker subdungeon, like the Havendale Bridge and your screen suddenly flashes orange the reaction is "Bleh!" not "Wow"." I really mean it, there's what, 1 dungeon where the orange screen doesn't come off as jarring, and that's Magma Mines.
Ok, that's it for the Early-Mid game. Now for:
MIDGAME PROPER:
Everything but the gold challenges, the Paladin Silver challenge (was locked due to needing Dragon Isles unlocked for no obvious reason), and the final directional quests (and 4 final throphies).
ITEMS:
Generally I've used everything but the Fire Heart at some point, and I might even use it if I turn to healthmonsters. Truly, besides the weird unlock prerequisites such as the Hero's Helm has (in relation to gold required to unlock the quest), I'm having trouble deciding what to fill my veto slots with. You guys really made a lot of stuff work.
Issue No.1 - the Mas09 ledger is easily acquireable, lockerable, has a very cheap activation and prep cost and is on par if not more powerfull than most VICIOUS rewards. It's probably the most powerful item in the game and needs somethign done to it ASAP.
Issue No. 2 - the other guys, Avatar in particular, have expressed a desire to have all the subdungeon items be lockerable, even if it means adjusting their effects and power level so that it makes sense. Darvin even stated that Draco's heart isn't even too powerful. I don't know what to think exactly, except that having a "locker only" items category might be fun, but it has to be uniform.
Issue No. 3 It's not clear whether you can both locker and veto an item. Some people have expressed desire to have this option.
New: (Friday)
Issue No. 4: I've cmpletely changed my mind about Crystall Ball. The viability of the wizard seems to be directly tied to autoprepping it. I'm not sure what to think - i was devastating the game with spellcasters last time around and never touched it. This time around it's an auto-prep, and i'll see what the game looks like without it once I start testing the Mage Fist. What it does is let spellcasters explore almost the entire map and waste a ton of blackspace and still be able to spike 2 bosses. B2P is at least anti-synergistic with schadenfraude, this isn't.
QUESTS:
Unlikely Heroes: turned up out of a random comment about Venture Cave not having proper questlines and became the heart and soul of the midgame. It was awesome, just what hard is supposed to be. However, the race/class choices were a bit weird, and there seemed to be no Paladin or Sorcerer represented, but the monk and the wizard turned up twice. Since the wizard also turns up in the Grimm's Grotto quest, I think that he's being needlessly forced.
SUBDUNGEONS:
Issue No. 1 - some of the boys and I decided we'd really like a "conversion fodder" subdungeon as a "can spawn anywhere" one. We made a thread about it.
Issue No. 2 - The Cha Dylan subdungeon seems to appear noticably more often than any other subdungeon. It's awesome the first time around, but gets tiresome after a while (the size of it, yet the relative lack of content in it opposed to the level from which you descend makes it a bit of a subconcious dissapointment. Psych at work there.)
Issue No. 3 - Saint Solitude Subdungeon Is another subdungeon where you can score a LEMISI glyph. The fact that it and Cha Dylan have overlapping spawn areas is a bit puzzling.
Issue No. 3 - Venus Patrol subdungeon rewards seemed quite a bit too good. I like the fact that piety as a resource is getting used more though
CLASSES:
I liked the Assasin nerfs, and I liked the Paladin nerfs. Monk nerfs also did a good job of making him very tricky in unfavourable maps. However:
Issue No. 1 The Berserker is noticably struggling outside of very favourable maps.
Issue No. 2 The Warlord is an engine of destruction. He needs nerfs, no joke. He still has Ye Brokene Olde Cydstepp and practicaly the Rogue bonus on top of it. I suppose nerfung his %buffs to 25% each might do the trick, but the fact is that I noticed a big difference between him and everybody else and I wasn't even using the trisword which he has incredible synergy with. Take also into account all the VICIOUS runs the Darvin's been making, and please do something.
Issue No. 2 The Bloodmage is frankly even more powerfull. He was the star of my last playthrough, and then, at the very end, he got buffed. Whether it's the current B2P or the BM in general I don't know, but I don't think anyone can beat him for the level difference between hero and target monster, by a long shot (in otherwise reasonable circumatances).
GLYPHS:
Well, I've used all of them at some point or another. Adding APHEELSICK to my repertiore scored me a lot of wins, IMAWAL was just great this time around (underused, more than underpowered, but could still use cost decrese maybe). HALPMEH isn't what it used to be, but it's still good with regen fighters, and WHEYTWUT I don't know what to think of. The 3rd tier GLYPHS unlocks actually cause a difficulty spike on the grounds that GETINDARE stops being an almost guaranteed spawn.
Issue No. 1 The operating principles behing PISSORF are obscure to say the least. It's integral to the midgame, it synergizes with Orcs, Tri-Sword, Mage Plate, but none of this is obvious. It needs a tutorial that appears sooner than you get to complete all the spellcasting gold challenges (which are all one big PISSORFF tutorial, as far as I've seen). It needs a clearer tooltip (standardize the effect to save tooltip space, maybe, and make sure that even the village idiot can understand that -% damage doesn't affect it).
New (Friday):
Issue No. 2 The CYDSTEPP that everyone is using and the CYDSTEPP the Warlord is using aren't the same glyph. It's possible that the general purpose one could cost a bit less. I've been using it, and the effect is powerfull, to be sure, but the nature of the glyph prevents overuse, it can't be prepped, and having it (and IMAWAL also maybe) could let us combine it's use with a utility glyph, or help Berserkers out (they're allready struggling compared to others).
GODS:
Issue No. 1 If Pactmaker could be made to work in a way where you could choose a pact before you pick consensus, then by all means, please make it so. One missclick there can cause all calculations to break down. Also if Alchemy Pact won't be touched, can we please get a clear clarification on why not?
And that's all for now, I'm tired as hell, and I hope the dev's get a chance to go through this, and if they find stuff they agree on and is easy to get in there before the break to do so. If not, well, it was a fun playthrough and I think many of these are sensible and needed polishing touches. Challenges writeup coming along one of these days.