View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0005540 | Valley 1 | Suggestion - Balancing Issues | Jan 31, 2012 12:22 pm | Feb 6, 2012 3:49 pm | |
| Reporter | Terraziel | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | feedback | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 0.566/0.567 | ||||
| Summary | 0005540: Issues with lifetime of enemy shots | ||||
| Description | The basic problem is probably that enemy shots last far,far too long, Skelebots are by far the worst offenders for this, and whilst I generally take issue with basic enemies with longer range than the player, especially with all the corridors in the game, that's the least of the issues associated with it. The main one is that it means that enemy shots not only go round corners but multiple corners, to use some terrible ASCII _B__ | | | | ___| | A As it stands an enemy at point A will actually manage to hit a player at point B, with the player having no way to retaliate, and given that it's probably more than one enemy these frequently turn into situations where you Have to take damage to proceed. (which is a gaming no-no as far as I am concerned) The second issue is that it means that enemy shots litter parts of the map, even after the enemy is dead. This is most obvious in corners of rooms where shots will tend to cluster but can happen pretty much anywhere given the right circumstances, during combat this isn't as much of an issue (though does mean that you can easily take damage multiple times from the same shot) but after it it's just irritating as my options are either walk through and take unnecessary damage or wait around for however many seconds till the shots despawn. As to solutions, the obvious ones, without affecting range which is more complicated, are 1. Shots should disappear after hitting the character. 2. Shots should disappear after hitting walls. Now obviously, there can\will\should be exceptions for the sake of enemy variation, but those should clearly be the base. As I see it the issue overall is that what works outdoors doesn't work indoors, shots surviving in the way they do has little impact outside as you have a considerable amount of empty space to dodge in to, inside it leaves you with having to run through enemy fire simply to be able to shoot back. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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Yep, outside the skelebot snipers don't matter in the same way, and their shot lifetimes are long so that you're faced with a jumping game in order to get around what they're doing -- this is something fairly central to shmups, which we're imitating for many parts of this game. In interiors, of course, this is more of an issue. We may need to shorten enemy spell lifetimes indoors, or at any rate have alternate spell lifetimes indoors, undergrounds, and on surfaces. |
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I think the problem is that most of the enemies have much larger spell lifetimes than the player's long range spells. This is fine for bosses but maybe not for standard enemies like the Espers and Skelebot snipers which can be a real pain in maze rooms. I think just reducing their range a little bit should be fine. Most spells are supposed to slide against walls, it's intentional. And perhaps remove a spell bullet if it's moving too slowly or not moving at all? |
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Most of what you are describing is by design, although in tight quarters it can get annoying. There's no concept of parity between the players and the enemies, that's not the point: they get way more projectiles than you, and they stick around longer than the enemies, because that's the nature of a shmup and it creates a dodging game. Problem comes when you can't dodge, as in interiors of that nature, which is what we need to address. When it comes to projectiles that aren't moving at all, there again those are things that provide a temporary obstacle that you have to avoid. The general rule of thumb for most AVWW enemies is a goal to have vastly more projectiles than there are enemies. |
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How much hassle would it be to include line of sight in the decision for whether the enemy fires? as it stands enemies fire constantly as soon as they have initially detected you, if it was changed so that they only fire if they can "see" you then my first complaint would be dealt with somewhat as something at Point A wouldn't even be firing at the player till they were at the bottom of the corridor. As to increasing the ways to dodge, shmups generally provide either maneuverability or ways to nullify attacks, with shields being unavailable for the first couple of tiers, you need to either increase basic maneuverability (crouching and sliding come to mind) or provide an earlier way of nullifying attacks, some way of shooting enemy attacks down perhaps, or indeed just a basic shield. Of course the most obvious way from a platformer perspective is to increase the size of the indoors considerably and give you the space to dodge. It would probably make the buildings feel unrealistic but a necessary evil I fear. |
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Line of sight would be tricky, and kind of beside the point -- enemies can fire around corners, and so can you. If the enemies didn't fire when you weren't visible, players could game that to an extraordinary degree. In terms of increasing ways to dodge: that's something for later, I'm just not there yet with the mental energy to get into that one yet. It needs to be addressed, but we're essentially in another power-coding phase at the moment and we need to finish up that stuff before getting to this one. |
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Why do we need to be able to fire around corners? It made sense before bullet speeds were slowed down, but now that we have time to see them moving and think about getting out of the way it seems pretty perverse. This leads to all kinds odd results that don't seem intended --- cover often turns out to be useless, corners have a tendency to become deathtraps as lots of shots pile up and get stuck in them. It all means I'm finding myself feeling like I don't really get the rules about how shots move, which feels unfair. |
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Why not what we had before? Most shots will disappear when they hit a wall (both yours and the enemies), but there are a few dedicated types of shots (again, a few enemy attacks belonging to a few enemies, and a few spells for you) that can have projectiles that can keep going even after they hit a wall. In fact, that can be a selling point for certain spells. I guess most bosses should get an attack type that gives "can survive impact with wall" shots. Similar story with hitting characters, though some element of "can hit N enemies before disappearing" can be introduced. (Shot types that revolve around hitting the same target multiple times should continue to do so) |
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A few points: 1. Enemy shots HAVE to persist through multiple players for multiplayer to work at all (from a balance standpoint). Ergo, almost all enemy shots have to either pierce or have to be fired in pretty quick succession. That doesn't really say anything about aim, though. 2. Enemy aim isn't really good enough to be able to hit you effectively if you stand partly behind cover and partly not. They aim for your center of mass, and doing line of sight calculations is bloody expensive on the CPU. The wall-sliding of the shots makes it so that the enemy can be a little off with their aim and still hit you. Otherwise it is far too easy for players to take advantage of blind spots that enemies are naturally going to have. Cover is always effective, but if an enemy is firing down at you around a corner while you're lower, then any shots that make it to the corner are going to come down at you. It's different from other games, sure, but I think it's interesting-different once you get used to it in particular. It's something that leads to different kinds of strategies rather than just the standard "if I'm standing out of line of sight right behind this little wall, then I'm invincible for now." Instead you have to do a bit of mental prediction of the angle that shots would come around will have, and go further up or down that wall to avoid them. |
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Perhaps there could be a check on the projectile's x/y coordinates; if neither is changing then the projectile is stuck in a corner and should have it's life shortened. I often find myself finishing off a creature and then waiting for its shots to expire before continuing on. |
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I just don't like waiting 5+ seconds after the enemies are dead because their shots are lingering on an item pickup in the corner. If you don't want to alter shot despawn time, could we instead perhaps not have items spawn right in the corner of rooms? |
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I do feel it's kinda excessive --- I often find myself getting trapped in dead ends that are not close to being in enemy line of sight as I run away shots around corners. I take Chris's point on firing around corners balancing LoS weakness; perhaps shots could die shortly after hitting a wall? I do think if I'm at the bottom of a deep hole the enemy isn't looking into I should be safe. Actually I think that gets at the problem I have --- enemies firing directly at the center of mass don't shoot for the entrances to holes strategically, but when I'm trying to run away their last shots will chase me way down into cover, which tends to get you right when you really can't afford an extra shot. But if we're not changing this to make it seem more natural, may I suggest adding a bit to the tutorial with a warning and example? "Poor Zebedee forgot that spells can round corners." I'd suggest setting up a situation that encourages the player to practice taking advantage of it; I still haven't really figured out how to use it. That's my own laziness, but I suspect new players will do the same. |
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I wish to revise my point of view, because I just fought my way through a boss tower... with a bugged entrance so I had to swim through lava just to get past the first room, losing 200% off my health buff right at the start... anyway that's already been reported and fixed and it's not the point. Where was I? So this boss tower was just 6 blue amoeba rooms in a row. Shots have got to despawn faster. That was ridiculous. Some rooms were fine, but anything with relatively close quarters... yikes. |
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How about something like shot "lifetime" decays twice as fast when hugging a wall/floor/ceiling, and maybe four times as fast when trapped in a corner. (As always, exact numbers are subject to adjustment) This still gives the ability for shots to hug walls and travel around corners, but not for free. It should also help clean up battlefields with lots of "sitting" bullets. Alternate, lesser "wall hugging lifetime penalties" could possibly be made for bullet types specifically designed to hug walls, which would be a selling point for spells. |
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I think that TechSY730 has a really good point on that. |
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One thing that helps me to deal with long shots is shields. Long corridor? Put on a shield and charge. Waiting for a shot to disappear? Put on a shield and charge. For my playstyle shields are essential, and I would like to see at least one of them as a starting continent spell. Perhaps this would make the long shots less problematic for other players. |
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Regarding shields: while it's great that some players like them a lot, they aren't intended to be something that is required for players to be able to play at all. In for the next version (0.572), we'll see how well this helps: * Enemy shot time to live changes: ** Generally reduced the time to live of a variety of ultra-long-lasting enemy shots to about 2/3 their former value, including skelebot snipers and giant amoebas. ** For most shot types that live more than a second or two, they are now adjusted based on the type of chunk they are in. *** In surface chunks they tend to last just as long as they always did. *** In large interior rooms (defined as the FunkyInteriorWalls, GeneralBossRoom, and OverlordBossRoom room template types only) and undergrounds, they might have their time to live somewhat reduced, or not at all reduced. *** In small interior rooms (all those not defined as large interior rooms above), they tend to have their shot time to lives drastically reduced, often by 50% or more. *** The idea here is to make it so that there isn't so much shot spam during big boss fights, and also so that things like espers aren't so deadly in small hallways. |
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Chris, not sure how important it is, but you could probably add LargeAtrium to the list of rooms for the longer TTL. |
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I was on the fence with that one, but given where those are used and how big they are, I wasn't really sure about that -- they didn't look quite as large on average as I'd probably want. |
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Ok, no problem. It probably is better to err on the side of too short a TTL right now, anyway. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 31, 2012 12:22 pm | Terraziel | New Issue | |
| Jan 31, 2012 12:23 pm | Terraziel | Description Updated | |
| Jan 31, 2012 12:28 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0018445 | |
| Jan 31, 2012 1:08 pm | TerraSleet | Note Added: 0018446 | |
| Jan 31, 2012 1:23 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0018448 | |
| Jan 31, 2012 2:04 pm | Terraziel | Note Added: 0018449 | |
| Jan 31, 2012 2:18 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0018450 | |
| Jan 31, 2012 4:18 pm | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Jan 31, 2012 4:18 pm | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Feb 1, 2012 8:18 pm | martyn_van_buren | Note Added: 0018486 | |
| Feb 1, 2012 10:13 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0018489 | |
| Feb 2, 2012 9:16 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0018494 | |
| Feb 2, 2012 12:34 pm | Underfot | Note Added: 0018509 | |
| Feb 4, 2012 10:32 pm | BobTheJanitor | Note Added: 0018619 | |
| Feb 4, 2012 10:58 pm | martyn_van_buren | Note Added: 0018620 | |
| Feb 4, 2012 11:19 pm | BobTheJanitor | Note Added: 0018621 | |
| Feb 5, 2012 1:34 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0018622 | |
| Feb 5, 2012 1:39 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0018622 | |
| Feb 6, 2012 10:39 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0018637 | |
| Feb 6, 2012 1:23 pm | tbogue | Note Added: 0018650 | |
| Feb 6, 2012 3:28 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0018655 | |
| Feb 6, 2012 3:28 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Feb 6, 2012 3:28 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | considering => feedback |
| Feb 6, 2012 3:41 pm | tigersfan | Note Added: 0018658 | |
| Feb 6, 2012 3:47 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0018659 | |
| Feb 6, 2012 3:49 pm | tigersfan | Note Added: 0018661 |
