View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0007286 | Valley 1 | Suggestion - Balancing Issues | Apr 27, 2012 6:51 pm | Apr 28, 2012 10:13 pm | |
| Reporter | Bluddy | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Severity | minor | ||||
| Status | closed | Resolution | won't fix | ||
| Product Version | 1.001 | ||||
| Summary | 0007286: Start game with very few spells | ||||
| Description | One of the issues in the game is that on the first continent (or perhaps in general), you start with most of the best spells (ie long range spells) unlocked. (Making those spells less dominant is another issue) This is a big problem from the perception of the player, who doesn't get the feeling of slowly expanding his power by researching new spells. This feeling is pretty critical. You need to feel like you were barely getting by a second ago, and now you finally have something useful to work with. I'm not sure which spell should be given at first. I just know that if you start without anything like fireball and then you craft it, the feeling of empowerment would be huge, and it's a shame not to take advantage of that. Especially when there are complaints (which are somewhat legitimate IMO) that researching a spell doesn't feel empowering enough. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | New | ||||
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I disagree. Having player agency from the start is important, and not just limiting them to too little. Lots of experience from AI War backing me up on this one (plus the fact that many enemies would be literally impossible if there were too few things left). In terms of what you're generally seeking, we simply need more spells. Most new spells would not be unlocked from the start, giving that feeling of empowerment you're looking for. But as a general rule, I haven't heard people feeling non-empowered. If some do that's a shame, but I don't feel that limiting options is the way to go. |
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I don't think we need more spells right now. I think we need ways to give people reasons to use the variety of spells already available. If you want to see people feeling not empowered, just look at the forum, or the Qt3 forum. People have discussed this a lot. New spells don't feel much better than previous ones, and new spell types seem unnecessary. It's too easy to play the entire game with a generic long range spell or 2. There need to be ways to encourage different spells. Long range spells prevent you from getting hurt and hit the target at the same time. Melee spells, by contrast, are dangerous to use -- enemies will get you both with their projectiles and their melee attacks (touching them). Now one of the reasons for this is that the player has too much mobility and access. I actually didn't notice this problem while I played with the keyboard. Why? Because the limitations of playing with the keyboard made certain enemy attack patterns really challenging. For example, desert burrowers are extremely hard to kill with the keyboard because they're below your line of attack. To hit them you need to favor wide spells like energy orb (but burrowers have lightning resistance), or you can try aim a rock at them (not easy) or you have to jump above them hit them below you. Your limitations make the different-moving enemy a challenge. By contrast, with the mouse using only 2 spells, I can hit the burrowers at any distance easily. Another example is the bat -- I can always zap him when the mouse is enabled, but with keyboard-only, enemies that approach you very fast and bob up and down are really hard to hit. Melee spells are often a better choice here. Different enemy attack patterns are a useful way of making different spells needed, but with your ability to attack enemies at any angle and amazing mobility, every enemy becomes virtually the same. It's too easy to always hit the enemies with a mouse. Every fight then plays out the same and there's no need for a variety of spells. Nevertheless, enemy tactic variety could be a way to make different spell types useful -- it'll just be harder with mouse controls. Other ways could involve limiting long range spells in some way. Perhaps long range spells could have their own separate mana bar, or they could just consume a ton of mana so you could only shoot a couple of long range spells before you have to switch to other spells. The problem with this approach is that the mana recharges so fast, an expensive spell doesn't mean anything. So you could enlarge the mana bar and make the long range spells more expensive and recharge slower. The other spells could be shot many times and would more or less match the recharge rate, while long range spells would quickly use up all the mana so you could only shoot them a few times. Another issue is making different element spells really feel different. The different long-range spells feel very similar to each other. But that's a whole different issue. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 27, 2012 6:51 pm | Bluddy | New Issue | |
| Apr 27, 2012 6:55 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Internal Weight | => New |
| Apr 27, 2012 6:55 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0022882 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 6:55 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => closed |
| Apr 27, 2012 6:55 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Apr 27, 2012 6:55 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => won't fix |
| Apr 28, 2012 10:13 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0022944 |
