View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0007266 | Valley 1 | Suggestion - Balancing Issues | Apr 27, 2012 12:13 am | Apr 29, 2012 11:28 am | |
| Reporter | LintMan | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 1.001 | ||||
| Summary | 0007266: Add a new High Resources/Rewards option | ||||
| Description | Suggestion: Add a "high-resources/rewards" option that gives player 2x the normal amount on collected resources and 1.5x the amount on mission rewards. I'm an incurable completionist. I've managed to curb my need to explore and uncover every cave, builing and region, but I'd still like to level up and play with all the available spells on a given continent. I enjoy the exploration and missions, but the grind required to do what I want is way too much, especially because I am rather allergic to repetitive grind. I easily spent 70+ hours on my first continent with this goal in mind, and STILL was unable to upgrade everything before it became too much.. Yes, I could have killed the Overlord sooner and moved on, but I want to try out all the other spells and have some fun with all the high end stuff before moving on and having to start over from scratch. Rushing to get the minimal stuff needed to win quickly just isn't how I like to play. And yes, I probably could have gotten what I needed more quickly if I focused and dedicated purely to getting exactly only what I neeeded, but that would make it more grindy and less fun. The problem is that the amount of resource gathering required, especially for the higher tier spells, is too much and becomes pure grind for me. Especially knowing that all the excess other resources you already have tons of won't carry over to the next continent, so you'll need to re-gather all of those. So now, on contient 2, I find myself unwilling to get or upgrade anything but the main 5 or 6 spells I need, because I don't want to waste the extra few jade or magma or coral or whatever, because I know I'm going to have to grind for a ton of them to get to the highest tiers. I also play on the easiest combat difficulty to make the resource gathering go quicker. I'd much rather spend my time in challenging and interesting combat, but I keep thinking "Man, if I make the game harder, it's going to take me EVEN MORE time to find all those opals and copper ingots and coral and plums etc I need, and that's ALREADY too long." I know most people don't play my way and they would breeze through the continent if they used this option, but I see it as being the same as the combat and platforming difficulty options - people can set them to suit their play style. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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I'm not a fan of this idea, but that just means I wouldn't use this mode were it implemented. That being said, have you tried multiplayer? It might be just what you are looking for. More people means faster gathering of resources & missions (and because each person gets their own personal resource stockpile, there is no downside). Just throwing that out there. Even if you don't like multiplayer, you don't even have to play in the same region as someone else, so it will be identical to singleplayer except for having someone else farming enchants & resources for you! |
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Unless I'm playing something on a LAN with one of my kids, I don't really do multiplayer anymore. But in any case, doesn't everyone still have to pay for their own spell upgrades? Or does a spell upgrade one person gets benefit everone? |
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Aren't you limited by the number of tier 5 orbs you can get? I thought you could only get them from main missions...? Am I wrong? Oh also, if such a mode was made, everyone would choose it to make things easier. So I don't think it's possible. Unless it forced you to play in the hardest difficulty level or something. |
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Once you're at tier 5, you can play all the main missions you want to get all the tier 5 orbs you want (and lower tiers if you use the diluter orbs). As far as "everybody would use it" - well khadgar right above said he wouldn't. And couldn't you also say the exact same thing about the platforming and combat difficulty choices? And yet, not everyone is playing on the easiest levels for those. |
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Oh I didn't know that. It's not the same. Low combat and platforming difficulty reduce the challenge of a game, and challenge is needed for enjoyment. It's one of the few controls you can put in the player's hands. But amount of grind IMO is not one of those controls. Sometimes some grind is necessary for the player to see enough of the game, but the player's interest is to find the fastest path through the grind (kinda like paying the least amount of taxes you can). Unless they have other drives such as to find and try every single thing the game has to offer, which isn't that common. |
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First of all, while challenge is a big factor in enjoyment, so is the level of grind so I don't think you can say the challenge factor important for enjoyment, but grind isn't. And secondly, challenge is also a huge factor in "seeing enough of the game": The "fastest path through the grind" very likely would be to put the combat difficulty on the easiest setting and beat the overlord while still on tier 1. But most people don't do that. Just like most people don't play AI War with with level 2 AIs so they can win faster. In other words, most people play this sort of game to have fun, not to "win", and aren't going to pick the "easy" options just to win quicker, if that isn't going to improve their fun. As for grind being necessary to make players see enough of the game: As I see it, by definition, grind is more about spending time doing something repetitive, so I don't really see it as making the player see more of the game, unless you mean "more time doing the same stuff over and over". Even with the higher resource amounts I suggest, there'd still be plenty or resource collection to be done. After you've collected gems from 20+ gem vein caves (ie: 3-4 veins for each of the gem types), do you need another 20+ to have seen enough? |
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Well grind might not be the right word. Every game consists on doing the same thing over and over. It's just a matter of how you dress it up. In the case of AVWW, you're repeatedly upgrading your spells, choosing which missions to do, playing those missions, and fighting enemies. Having an option to get more resources will be used by just about everybody IMO. Why wouldn't I want to be able to have access to every spell? But a game sometimes needs to limit players against their will because it's for their own good. If they had every spell, they'd lose interest faster, but when you're playing, you feel like you want to have access to as much as possible. It's possible that more resources SHOULD be distributed with each mission etc. But that's a different argument than having a special 'get more resources' option. You could even have an option for different length games because people can make a rational decision based on how much time they think they want to spend, so if you tell them that a 3 tier continent is, say 3 hours, 5 tiers is 7 hours and 10 tiers is 20 hours, they'll choose pretty well. Lowering the difficulty is different. If the fighting is effortless, for most people it ruins the basic repetitive action of the game, and they can't proceed -- they don't get any enjoyment from the core mechanic. |
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I think we can keep arguing this back and forth without convincing each other, but I think you're massively overestimating how much benefit a doubled resource income would be to getting all the spells. It will still take quite a long time. As for different length games - I spent 70+ hours on the first continent and still didn't get everything. Even accounting for wasted time, the newbie factor, etc, and then you cut it in half due to doubled resource income, that'd STILL be way more than "5 tiers is 7 hours". @Khadgar - I just checked out the multiplayer quickly, and it looks that while the building resources are shared between players, the spell resources and spells learned are not. And that's really the biggest part of my issue. |
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I like the idea, and I believe it should be an option you would choose at world creation. I would love to see more than just bonus rewards though. If I had the choice I would be playing the game in a sort of "Speed Mode." -All common ingredients and building materials would be gathered at double rate. -Missions would reward a more varied set of arcane ingredients and guardian powers. -Continents would raise in tiers after 3 mission completions. -Enchant charge would raise at a double rate, and perhaps the new reabsorb function would be buffed as well. -With the new overhaul of the upgrade stone mechanics there should be no need to change stone acquisition. -Also I'd like to see overlords get double the elite upgrades per continent as well as double spawn chances for elite spawns. I understand the original idea was more of a nice mutation for completionists, but I'm more interested in getting the full feel of the game even faster than you can already take it. I believe I'd have fun trying to maintain a decent settlement with more strict time constraints, and rescue missions would have increased importance. I'm sure I overlooked some important facets which would be needed to make it work properly, but I am fairly new to the game. =) All in all, I would love to see a plethora of mutations you could check on and off when starting a new world. Yes, many of them would make the game far easier, but not everybody is looking for the same challenge as everyone else is. The difficulty options currently only account for challenge in terms of gameplay. There is little consideration for time constraints regarding people who have a far more limited schedule. This game is a VERY capable time sink. A truncated experience could be a good thing for some of us. |
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LintMan, what would make sense to me is that once you reach tier 5 and beat the overlord, the game flooded you with resources so you could check out all the spells. Unfortunately, that would put a damper on x4000's idea to make the player come back to old continents. |
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That would be better than the current situation, but not as preferable because the main point (for me) to getting all those spells would be to use and experiment with them within the context of the normal game flow. Once I kill the overlord, I'm ready to move on to the next continent. Right now, it appears to me that once you've defeated the overlord, there is very little point in remaining on the continent (or returning to an old continent). I guess you can farm enchantments more easily, but little else carries over. Is there any other reason to go back or spend extra time there? (Besides just to get the rest of the spells - I'm not trying to get them all to just check some imaginary achievement off in my head; I want to be able to use them in a meaningful context along the way to getting them.) |
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OK well that gets back to the point that AFAIK Chris wanted to make it so that at least up to the destruction of the overlord you can only choose a certain subset of spells by limiting tier orbs. It's supposed to be a choice ie. you're not supposed to be able to get all the spells by design. Right now there's no reason to go back to old continents but at some point Chris mentioned wanting to do this. Continents get harder and harder until they get near impossible and he stated that the plan was then to go back to old continents. But I don't know if that's still the plan. |
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@lintman, spell resources are also shared on multiplayer. For example, if I go find 5 jade, every player now has 5 jade in their stockpile, even if they are new to the server after i went harvesting jade. Spells unlocked are still unique to each player, however. |
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@Bluddy - I understand that, but even with that design goal in place, it is still possible to do, but just an unfun slog. It's not as if getting more of the spells is some big advantage. I still only mainly use the 4 or so bound to the mouse buttons at any given time. I just like to sometimes swap them out for variety and experimentation between missions, to try to find good uses for the different spells. In the current system, I feel discouraged from experimenting at all. So I don't see why this has to be an iron rule for everyone and can't be optionally more flexible in the same way that the design goals impacted by the difficulty sliders effect are. @freykin - hmmm. I tried a bit of multiplayer and it didn't seem like stuff like gems, coral, clay or cherries were being shared, when I tried testing this. The building materials definitely were, but not spell resources. For sure, I know my son went and gathered a bunch of cherries at some point, but I had no cherries available for my character. I'll have to ask about this on the forum. Thanks. |
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I agree that you currently don't need much spell variety, but I think that's a (serious) design issue. Actually that just gave me an idea for another mantis... |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 27, 2012 12:13 am | LintMan | New Issue | |
| Apr 27, 2012 2:31 am | khadgar | Note Added: 0022797 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 9:04 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Apr 27, 2012 9:04 am | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Apr 27, 2012 1:22 pm | LintMan | Note Added: 0022854 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 1:52 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0022857 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 1:53 pm | Bluddy | Note Edited: 0022857 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 3:16 pm | LintMan | Note Added: 0022859 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 3:32 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0022861 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 4:11 pm | LintMan | Note Added: 0022863 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 5:40 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0022877 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 10:08 pm | LintMan | Note Added: 0022889 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 11:24 pm | Omosh | Note Added: 0022897 | |
| Apr 28, 2012 9:24 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0022940 | |
| Apr 29, 2012 1:37 am | LintMan | Note Added: 0022978 | |
| Apr 29, 2012 1:42 am | Bluddy | Note Added: 0022979 | |
| Apr 29, 2012 9:02 am | freykin | Note Added: 0022994 | |
| Apr 29, 2012 11:24 am | LintMan | Note Added: 0023001 | |
| Apr 29, 2012 11:28 am | Bluddy | Note Added: 0023002 |
