View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0007252 | Valley 1 | Gameplay Idea | Apr 26, 2012 11:20 am | Apr 27, 2012 10:24 pm | |
| Reporter | Bluddy | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Severity | minor | ||||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 1.001 | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 1.003 | ||||
| Summary | 0007252: Hide Enemy Unlockables | ||||
| Description | I think there's a problem with enemy unlockables. I've felt this way since they were introduced, and I've seen in reflected in some reviews and comments. The problem is that they're bad unlockables. You want to avoid them. They cause stress rather than enjoyment. I think a better way to do this is to hide them, and just announce that the new enemy was introduced when the unlockable condition is satisfied. There's another issue that I've found in one review. It's possible to proceed too far with enemy unlockables without making any progress in unlocking spell ingredients. This can create a very very difficult situation. I suggest that part of the unlock condition for enemies be that X positive unlockables were unlocked. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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Out of curiosity, what was the review? I haven't seen that one. |
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Why even mention a new monster has been unlocked just spawn it and wait for the player to find it in the world. This would create the illusion that as the game is played more and more things start appearing. the backstory could be this is in response to the Glyph Bearers actively trying to improve things for themselves. |
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I'm not sure which review it was -- I've just been reading a whole bunch of comments and reviews to get a sense of different people's thoughts and it's mixed up in my mind. It might have been a long comment on a thread somewhere. But I actually think Hyfrydle's suggestion is even better. No need to announce it. |
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On the other hand, in talking to press and even a number of other players, the adaptive nature of the world -- the difficulty ramps up as you demonstrate mastery -- has been a huge positive. The thing about comment threads, or even reviews sometimes, is that frankly not everybody is going to be a fan. If someone dislikes the game for lots of reasons, fixing all those reasons makes a different game and alienates those who already do like it. That's bad feedback and I consider it but mostly ignore it. If someone likes the game, or almost does, but something is really rubbing them the wrong way, then that's a great way to enhance the game. That I listen to a lot more heavily. In terms of the issue at hand, Keith and I talked about it and for now what we're going to do is split the unlockables in the encyclopedia into two sections: Unlockable Bonuses Unlockable Challenges That way you can see things you want to shoot for versus things that you might need to keep an eye on. It will make those lists saner in general anyway, and is just generally a positive thing. Beyond that... hiding too much from the player can lead to even worse results. For a lot of people, seeing the little popup of "progress toward X" just elicits a "cool!" response. But then if they poke at it more they can find out what is actually coming from it and plan accordingly. Hiding that would mean that players eventually just hit a point where -- without warning -- suddenly everything is harder. Hoo boy, talk about complaints. I think that transparency, but proper categorization, is more the way to go here. |
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Fair enough. But we don't need the count of 'another X to unlock this'. That just makes people nervous. And I agree that the concept of the adaptiveness is great. Did you see my point about making unlockable challenges contingent on X unlockable bonuses to prevent overpowering the player? What do you think of that? |
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"But we don't need the count of 'another X to unlock this'. That just makes people nervous." On the other hand, if you know it's there and you can't see the numbers, doesn't that make you MORE nervous? If you don't know it's there, then seeing that at first makes you go "oh cool, something to unlock!" And then eventually you find out what it is and that gives you foreknowledge to plan better. I'm not 100% sold that that's the right way to be thinking of those sort of unlockables, honestly, but that's what ultimately I settled on for the moment after really being on the fence. Keith and I had talked and he felt the same, but we also both wanted feedback from a wider variety of sources. "Did you see my point about making unlockable challenges contingent on X unlockable bonuses to prevent overpowering the player? What do you think of that?" Well, here's the thing: we've made this as a game where the player has a lot of choices to make, and the choices matter. And therefore, if you choose wrong, you can have bad stuff happen to you. The press are largely seeming to paint this as a reasonably hardcore game that you can pick up and just doodle around with, but that takes a larger time investment if you want to master it. I think that's about the right of it. You can just come in and mess about with the game and have a grand ol' time for 4, 8, heck even 12 hours. Your first continents isn't going to be that brutally hard no matter what. And hey, if you make really bad choices there's nothing to say you can't start another world and take a better stab at it, though you really shouldn't have to. Or if you just want that continent-1 experience three times in a row rather than actually playing continents 1, 2, and 3. The thing is that once you start getting into multiple continents territory, the kid gloves are coming off; we assume you're a hardcore player and want to be challenged a fair bit. If not, the difficulty can be set low enough that nothing should be an unwinnable challenge anyhow. If someone screws up so badly that they can't win because of sonic bats, they can always go to featherweight if they really have to. The positive unlockables also don't really mean much in terms of your ability to cope with the world: some, sure, but only in an indirect way. More of the preparedness of your character revolves around the enchants you've gotten and the spells you've unlocked, I'd say. And that's really impossible to gauge because different players use different combinations of spells for different effects: someone might only want death touch and a bunch of other buffs in order to do what someone else does with a long-range spell. It's happened before, and robbing that person of their progression based on detecting their preparedness wrong isn't a good thing, I don't think. Lastly, one key point about the elites is that they don't actually have more health or attack power in the main. Definitely not any of the lower-down ones that we've implemented so far. They simply have more interesting attacks and/or behaviors. So what I mean is, the spells you have are kind of irrelevant for your ability to deal with them. If you could kill regular bats, you can also kill sonic bats just as easily. The only thing that is changed is that they are now more capable of getting in some extra hits on you, too; so that would mean you might need to shift how you do your upgrade stone builds, or it might mean you need to switch to different body slot enchants if you have them, or it might mean you simply need to take more care in your jumping and dodging. Fire bats and ice bats, which are variants and are added in addition to the main bat line, DO have higher health. They are diluted by the presence of other monsters or by where they seed, however. ----- It's a tricky sort of thing, but ultimately we have to know what kind of game this is. Is it hardcore? If so, to what degree? Our goal has been to make it so that players can get into the game really easily, and that's been the focus for the last while; but people ARE getting into the game really well. There are minor things we can smooth over here and there, but largely I think people aren't having trouble getting into it if it's the sort of thing they would be into. Then we come down to retention, which is where games always lose me: okay, so I'm here and this is fun, but now I've mastered the basics. What's left? Oh, wait -- you mean that was IT!? Dang. That happens to me so frequently, and that's when I move on to other games. Here the goal is to keep the complexity and the challenge rising to be on par with the player as they grow into the game, such that hardcore players can stay for hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay time if they wish to. |
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It's a tricky sort of thing, but ultimately we have to know what kind of game this is. Is it hardcore? If so, to what degree? This is a line I think we've been trying to balance for a long time. So, maybe we incorporate this into what we've been doing and make it level based. Above a certain level, you don't get to know when the harder enemies come (maybe even randomize it just a bit, like instead of 80, somewhere between 75-85). But, on easier levels, you know exactly when they are coming, and you can plan accordingly. |
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Definitely not bringing levels back -- we don't need yet another progression system. And having the enemies adapt to what players are doing has been something that has been popular with players and press; I think it's really the only way to handle difficulty progression in a game where you can go anywhere. Otherwise you don't get the chance to fight easier monsters, you just always fight the hardest versions if you skip an area until too late. The game is hardcore after the first continent or so. But the first one is an ease-in period. |
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I meant difficulty levels, not civ levels. :) |
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Oh, I see. Well, they could certainly take longer to unlock on easier difficulties, too. |
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I'm not happy paraphrasing the dude who's pissed on the forums, but he does have a point that eluded me before when I was trying to think of it. Players are punished for fighting monsters, encouraging them NOT to fight them. This is a real issue. It's nice that we're 'adapting' to the player's level, but we're also providing a strong incentive for him not to fight. I'm not sure what to do to fix this. There's another point too. Just because the player killed 80 espers or whatever doesn't mean they're his favorite enemy. It's possible they just happen to be in the areas he's gone to, and they move in pretty fast so he has to defend himself. This is definitely true of bats, whom you just can't shake. So I'm getting iffy about this whole unlockable enemy system, as nice as it seems. Perhaps going back to the continent advancement idea is better, mixed with tiers. So every 2-3 tiers there's some enemy advancement. |
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Yep, I think there are some very valid points in there. I can't really respond to them right now, though, as I've somewhat collapsed under an anxiety attack for the evening. But yes, perhaps simply making it so that these are gated with percentages based on continents/tiers instead would do it. Then there's more variety and enemies don't seem so predictable (enemies with the same appearance act differently). Possibly paired with a shift so that you can't see the stats of enemies that you haven't damaged, so players aren't incentivized to pause and hover over enemies each time to see what variant they are before they engage them. Shooting the enemy once will pop up their type anyhow. |
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Okay, based on lots of feedback we completely redid the elites. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 26, 2012 11:20 am | Bluddy | New Issue | |
| Apr 26, 2012 11:39 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0022757 | |
| Apr 26, 2012 11:41 am | Hyfrydle | Note Added: 0022758 | |
| Apr 26, 2012 12:00 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0022759 | |
| Apr 26, 2012 12:50 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0022762 | |
| Apr 26, 2012 1:04 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0022763 | |
| Apr 26, 2012 1:38 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0022765 | |
| Apr 26, 2012 4:19 pm | tigersfan | Note Added: 0022773 | |
| Apr 26, 2012 4:19 pm | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Apr 26, 2012 4:19 pm | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Apr 26, 2012 4:21 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0022774 | |
| Apr 26, 2012 4:26 pm | tigersfan | Note Added: 0022776 | |
| Apr 26, 2012 4:28 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0022777 | |
| Apr 26, 2012 4:32 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0022778 | |
| Apr 26, 2012 8:07 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0022780 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 10:24 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0022893 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 10:24 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | considering => resolved |
| Apr 27, 2012 10:24 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 1.003 |
| Apr 27, 2012 10:24 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Apr 27, 2012 10:24 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:30 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Suggestion - Gameplay => Gameplay Idea |
