View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0008559 | Valley 1 | Balance Issue | Jun 15, 2012 6:14 am | Jun 25, 2012 10:09 pm | |
| Reporter | Misery | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | assigned | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 1.101 ( Post-Launch Series 1) | ||||
| Summary | 0008559: Evergreen Forest difficulty level very unbalanced | ||||
| Description | Right now, these areas are way, way harder than either the Deep, or the Lava Flats. I have nothing against a high level of difficulty and generally like a challenge, but these areas are so disproportionate to every other part of the game in terms of difficulty that they're really best avoided right now, regardless of what missions may be spawning in them. The layout can sometimes be a factor, but mostly it's what spawns in them; extreme numbers of Gargans, plenty of bats, and the Eagles and Eagle Divers, the only enemy in the game I might honestly call cheap (seriously, the only real way to deal with them seems to be to get them to crash into a bear trap). Not to mention the fact that really heavy infestations of Stinging Nettles are very common here; as in enough so that there's literally no room to move without getting stabbed unless you blast some of them. In any other area, this would be fine, but I find I generally dont have even a moment to be dealing with those upon entering one of these areas. The difficulty is also unbalanced even within each individual chunk. Like the Deciduous Forests these are very long areas in each chunk, but with Evergreen it's often the very first screen of any chunk that's this absurd battle for survival, since by their nature the two nastiest enemy types in the area will travel the entire chunk, so you'll meet up with ALL of them (and some bats) before you've gone very far; if you DO manage to take them out, the rest of the chunk just has a few bats, and that's it. If the difficulty of this area type is intended as this way, it should probably be similar to the Deep and Lava Flats in that it's not unlocked right away. Possibly the behavior of the Eagles at the very least should be changed; their lightning quick rush can be very difficult to deal with, as it's really the only attack in the game that you cant see coming; one minute everything is fine, and the next there's an Eagle right in your face. The divers are even worse, even if you know they're coming and when (via targeting, for example, or the scouting ability), it's often near impossible to dodge them, since they rise/fall along with your movement. And this is all inflated by the fact that there's usually MANY eagles at once. Perhaps change the Eagles to, say, fly back and forth as usual, but slowly; instead of simply ramming the player like some sort of aerial rhino, they could perhaps shoot feathers (single shots or spreads). The Divers perhaps could do this AND retain their vertical movement, but the slowed down speed would make it so that you have time to deal with them. They'd still be dangerous, but not "cheap" as they currently seem. Whatever the case, this is the one enemy in the game I honestly feel needs a big change. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Fix Before Major Release | ||||
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In addition to tweaking behaviour of eagles and shrinking the horizontal chunk size in these region types, may I also petition for a reduction of the spawn rate of the Gargans and/or a reduction on how strong their DoT effect is? |
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Maybe I'm missing something as I'm only on continent 2, but I disagree with most of these points. But overall these points have solutions in my eyes: you stand on the upper level and just kill the gargadons with a sliding spell, you run with the eagles and shoot them, you clear the nettles with misasma whip. Saying it's as hard as The Deep seems quite ridiculous to me, missions there can get insane with the sometimes hundreds of miasma bats willing to chip off 60 health a hit. I also play as a Bronze Age character, so I'm always faster than the eagles, maybe that would help things. This is relative to The Chosen One difficulty by the way. |
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It's going to be dependant on the player at least somewhat. The deep for instance, even on Master Hero or Chosen One, I really dont find it all that hard currently; the bats arent the brightest bulbs around and arent that tough to deal with for me. The only mission type in that place that's ever been annoying is rescue missions (the AI just cant handle the bats). But the Evergreen? I avoid it completely unless I absolutely have to go there. The problem isnt that Evergreen is difficult, it's that it's challenge level is way out of proportion to where it should be, particularly as it's one of the area types that can appear even on the very first continent, yet it's way nastier than, say, the Lava Flats, where at most you have to deal with a few fire type monsters and the occaisional raptor. Also the Eagles can depend very heavily on one other thing: The player's screen size. If they have a widescreen monitor, there's a bit more time to see the blasted things coming. If they DONT..... then there isnt. They're probably GOING to get hit, because there's less time to react to the thing's sudden appearance. Having been stuck with a rather ancient monitor up until very recently, this was a very, very common issue for me in this area type. Actually I meant to mention this bit in the issue report, completely forgot... |
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A potential solution: rather than scaling back or removing behaviour, why not have "charging" monsters (eagles predominantly, though rhinos, bulls, gargans etc. are similar in behaviour, just being landbound) get an "approach" indicator? It'd work similar to the rubble indicators in Freefall missions, except for appearing on the side rather than the top of the screen; proximity for it to appear would likely be within a set distance of the player, preferably proportional to the enemy speed (so faster enemies get warnings further away since they take less time to close with you.) |
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The screen size is a good point, I don't have that problem at 1600 x 1200. And your solution BenMiff sounds good. Wish I could change my support back to neutral...guess I'm supporting now! |
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I have to agree on the Eagle Divers being a problem. No matter how hard I try to time a jump, they always hit me. It's...Pretty obnoxious, really. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 15, 2012 6:14 am | Misery | New Issue | |
| Jun 15, 2012 2:25 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0025854 | |
| Jun 18, 2012 11:58 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Fix Before Major Release |
| Jun 18, 2012 11:58 am | tigersfan | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Jun 18, 2012 11:58 am | tigersfan | Status | new => assigned |
| Jun 23, 2012 6:04 pm | darkchair | Note Added: 0026045 | |
| Jun 23, 2012 6:04 pm | darkchair | Note Edited: 0026045 | |
| Jun 23, 2012 7:28 pm | Misery | Note Added: 0026046 | |
| Jun 23, 2012 8:47 pm | BenMiff | Note Added: 0026048 | |
| Jun 24, 2012 12:33 pm | darkchair | Note Added: 0026050 | |
| Jun 25, 2012 10:09 pm | RetroNutcase | Note Added: 0026059 | |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:29 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Gameplay - Balance Issue => Balance Issue |
