Messages

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Do you use bear traps, and why not?

« on: May 04, 2012, 08:14:57 AM »

I think part of the issue, and one of the considerations on any change, is that "trap spells" just aren't very useful in a general sense in an exploration-based game.  The enemies aren't coming to you, you're going to the enemies.  That means the only time traps are relevant is when you set them up and then lead enemies back into them, which as many have suggested is a waste of time since you can just shoot them. 

But it also means that in situations where enemies *are* coming to you, traps can be very useful and so they have to balanced with that in mind.  If beartraps locked enemies in place for a moment, that might make them far too good when doing Battleground missions.

I think making traps work would require a few things.  First, additional missions or enemies to make trap setting a worthwhile activity.  Some kind of "hunter-killer" enemies like an assassin robot that tries to get behind you and follow you would make traps a worthwhile means of stopping them.  Perhaps enemies that set traps (a mine-laying urban crawler?) would also be good, to give players the idea of what to do with them.  For missions, maybe a tower-defense style mission where you lay out traps and enemies have a few routes they can take.  Or an "Escape the Horde" mission where you have to reach the end of a long winding room while being chased by an endless swarm of baddies.

Second, I think traps would require some rebalance on costs.  Beartraps are essentially free but limited, since they're items.  Other "spells" in that category either have unreplicatable effects (platforms) or offer a better alternative (moon lamps are a lot brighter than most other lights, but fall like items).  If there were trap spells, I'd imagine they'd work well as high damage, high mana spells.  That makes them a good choice for high mana characters, who probably don't have as many damage boosts so traps become attractive compared to direct fire spells (cheap but lower damage).   If bear traps stayed in the game, something like a slowing or locking effect might be good, since that's something spells don't currently do.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Lost and sad. A frustrated AVWW experience.

« on: April 30, 2012, 08:42:17 AM »

This reminds of the story about one guy who didn't realize how fights worked in Shadow of the Colossus.  He never figured out you had to climb the monster and stab the glyphs, so he just used the bow.  It took like 3 hours but he managed to kill the first boss just by shooting it and doing that little one pixel of damage until it died.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Poll: LEAST favorite mission type

« on: April 30, 2012, 08:39:04 AM »

I'm amazed at the hate for Anachronism missions.  I really enjoy them!  As x4000 points out, they aren't memorization missions, they just require some deduction.  And a bit of skillful play.  There's usually only a few out of place enemies, so you have to figure out which ones are out of place compared to the majority.  You have avoid enemies and not get cornered.  And you have to switch up your arsenal.  Since the change that makes you just take reflected damage (instead of instant loss, a huge improvement!), I make sure to have a "killing spell" and a "testing spell" that does less damage.   Stealth enchantments help out a lot as well.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Design Goal: Getting players to specialize, not just use everything.

« on: April 29, 2012, 08:52:06 PM »

A thought similar to the "restricted tiers/resources" idea, perhaps this can be implemented just using existing elements in better ways.  My example of Light spells was pretty specific to just those spells because ocean shallows are hard to reach in general, especially with the change to how buoys work.  But that can be an advantage to the game's design.  Perhaps if the continent itself was less pangea and more an archipelago of sorts.  Even just a two tile wide "river" between halves of the continent could serve as a buffer zone, requiring buoys to get across.  Required terrain features means you have to play out certain missions to get them.  If the only Forest spaces are on the other side, then getting green elements suddenly becomes much more difficult, and that guides spell selection.

I think that same idea applied to new terrain types could play out very well.  Maybe mountains that can't be passed without tunnels.  Or "Storm Basins" where the wind is particularly bad and you need a chain of adjacent wind towers to break through. (Actually, "the Deep" could serve that purpose just as readily.) 

Going back to the other idea I posted, perhaps "condition specific" resources also give an additional reason to venture into dangerous areas.  Getting a rare resource needed for high power spells is a good reason to venture into a Stormy area, or the territory of Pirates.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Enemy Drops

« on: April 29, 2012, 08:18:46 PM »

That said, I realize that the game doesn't notice players doing stealth, and doesn't do anything to "punish" us, so I wonder if this could be changed?  Would it feel more fair to you if there was a mechanic whereby if you avoided a lot of enemies (I assume this would mean raising CP a good deal without doing getting a lot of enemy unlocks), instead of unlock tougher enemies the existing creatures would get boosts to detection range and become more aggressive about chasing you?  I think I might like that as a stealth player, and I wonder if that would feel more fair to more combaty players?  In that case it wouldn't be so much being "punished" for killing enemies as the game taking note of your playstyle and upping the challenge for you.

I think that would be excellent.  When I noticed that killing enemies was making them tougher, I just saw it as a good incentive to try stealth more.  Previously I'd had very little reason to use stealth outside certain missions.  Obviously I can't avoid killing all enemies, but now I had a reason to at least try and avoid killing some of them.  Interesting, some enemies already have much higher detection rates.  Clockwork Probes (vile villains!) seem to lock on to me very quickly no matter what.  So that seems to be a small element of the game already.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Poll: MOST favorite mission type

« on: April 29, 2012, 08:11:14 PM »

I went with Stealth Assassination as well, though I do enjoy the simple pleasures of a Boss Tower or the excitement of Battlegrounds as well.   Once I ratcheted up the difficulty enough to make stealth missions actually require stealth, they became very tense and enjoyable.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Poll: LEAST favorite mission type

« on: April 29, 2012, 08:08:57 PM »

I have to agree that while some missions can be things I don't feel like doing at the time, I pretty much avoid Meteor Storm missions if I can, they just take too long.  So often I feel like I'm just standing on top of one stack of boxes, waiting for the rest of the damn rocks to fall.

Rather than focus on monsters or defending robot blasters, I think I'd almost rather see this whole mode re-imagined as a more pressure-based scenario.  I'm picturing instead of 100 small meteors, you just have to fend off like 1 to 5 huge ones.   In this scenario, you have to keep shooting the rock to whittle down it's monstrous HP, and to push it back up.  If you don't push it back, it crushes you and all your supplies.  Meanwhile, monsters keep coming in.   So now, it's a blend and the player has to make strategic choices.  Do I fight off monsters, or do I shoot the rock a few dozen times to push it back up and buy myself a little more time? 

The current form almost has this mode going on, but the rocks move so fast and hurt so much that they're always the top priority.  And there's just so damn many of them and it takes so long to finish.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Design Goal: Getting players to specialize, not just use everything.

« on: April 29, 2012, 08:02:58 PM »

1. There's no incentive to ever use more than 2 long range spells. Since a big part of the game is about researching new spells, that part is rendered ineffective as well. At this point, there's very little need to add more spells to the game, since people use a small fraction of what's available and have no incentive to do otherwise.

I disagree somewhat.  I regularly use 2 LR spells (fireball and lighting) for general use, sometimes swapping them between buttons depending on the relative prevalence of monsters (fireball first in esper heavy areas, lighting first in robot heavy areas).  I also keep Throw Rock within easy reach because a few monsters benefit from having a stronger attack, particularly an earth element (clockwork probes especially).   I've also considered other spells and my choice of fireball was somewhat arbitrary over the newer light spell (energy orb?)   I might use that one on the next continent just because I did enjoy it.

2. There's no incentive to use anything but long range spells, since anything else is more dangerous with minimal reward to compensate for that increased risk.

Again, I must disagree.  I always keep Miasma Whip within easy reach, mostly for harvesting but having a potent melee attack helps a lot again kamikaze enemies like bats or spawned fairies that are either hard to hit or can sneak up on you.   I also tried out Leaf Whip, and it works very well too but (echoing Chris' point) my enchants have veered towards mana reduction and cooldown, which means I can use miasma whip a whole lot, very quickly.  My current character is also pretty low on mana, which makes heavy hitters like Leaf Whip unappealing.

3. Since all spells are competing for resources, there's no incentive to research anything but long range spells of a few kinds (or even just one kind).

No way, I almost always have extra resources around anyway because I take up missions to get one thing and get something extra or because I do side missions.  Now, I do tend towards "spell families" like Light + Air + Fire because all use the same resources (Charred Embers and Magma, in this case) but even then there's limiting factors.  A major reason I dropped the Light spells is because I need Coral to upgrade them, and the only ocean shallows is like 5 tiles away.  Building a chain of buoys to get to it has been a continent-long endeavor.   If anything, that supplies your "limited tiers per continent" idea to some degree.  I just don't have access to needed materials, so entire spell branches are cut off for me.

4. There's only a minor incentive to use different elements. Having different effects to different elements (burning, blinding, knockback, wet + electricity = extra electrocution, etc) would go a long way towards alleviating that.

I do like that idea.  See the game Magicka for a neat example of each element having a unique special effect but all elements coming in basically the same forms.  I think more potent specials could bolster some of the less-used spells right now too.  Like, I hardly use any blue (water) spells because they're weaker and the knockback effects aren't nearly potent enough to make up for it.  It doesn't help that the vast majority of enemies are immune to knock back anyway.

5. Upgrading spells just leaves you with a stronger spell of the same type. The strength of the game is in having many different spells, but most people only need to upgrade their existing spells. Spending time upgrading the same spell is spending time doing something suboptimal and less interesting, because it doesn't expose the player to the gamut of spells the game offers.

Not really sure what to say about that.  I somewhat like the challenge of racing to upgrade my primary spells each tier to compensate for stronger enemies, and usually enemy migrations encourage learning a new spell if the new enemy mix messes up my dynamic.  I think additional enemies will help a lot with this aspect.  Like if Clockwork Probes start showing up further afield, I may have to upgrade my rock throw more, or look into other green spells to get an edge on them. 

I do think the enemy mix could use a boost in some areas though.  Like right now, the Skelebot Junkyard is just very badly balanced.  It's too easy to dominate with just lighting spells, and the rewards from raiding stashes in those little huts is far too great.

6. There's no mechanism to make each continent feel unique from a spell perspective or to try to push you towards other spell choices (AFAIK. I think there used to be some but they were dropped?). For a random game that's supposed to be infinite, it's critical (IMO) to force people into trying different spells so that they get different experiences as they progress in the game. That's why I think it would be so great to sometimes have fireball at tier 1 and sometimes at tier 5. Anyway, that's just one idea to improve the dynamics.

Again, I think the mix of which elements are easily available and which enemies are prominent in the areas you explore help to dictate which spells you focus on.  I think as the enemy variety increases, this will improve.  I also think somehow restricting access to materials even more might help.  Perhaps if each tier required new resources, and those resources were only available in certain regions with specific criteria that could be rarer.   Like "Tier 5 Fire spells require 'Skelebot Nuclear Cores' that can only be obtained by killing Skelebot bosses in stormy Junkyard areas."  Or "This spell requires 'Cooled Lava' that can only be obtained in ocean shelves that border Lava Flats."

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: A Valley Without Wind 1.0 Version To Launch The Week Of April 16th

« on: March 22, 2012, 01:01:49 AM »

Alright!  That's the week of my birthday!  Maybe it'll be out on my "digital distributor of choice" in time for that momentous event, so I can get myself another copy.  Or give a copy to my friends, thus giving myself the gift of coop buddies.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Ocean Shallows complaints and suggestions.

« on: March 13, 2012, 07:54:03 PM »

I thought the oceans were a bit ridiculous as well, and I was only playing on Hard.  I eventually toned it down to Normal - 1 (Apprentice?) just so I could get to the 3rd level of caves without digging my fingernails into the mouse in frustration.  There's also a (bug|feature?) where-by occasionally a boss room spawner will go ballistic and release a stream of monsters, and I had carp and whales popping in just as fast as I could kill them.

I don't mind the movement speed issue quite so much.  I can't move very fast anyway since I have to plant lights constantly.  The fact that so much of the area is dark only makes the monster problem more ridiculous since getting swarmed by blue whale spawn when you can't see them is a sure way to bite it fast.


On the front of adding more monster variety, I don't see why limited migration couldn't be enabled, unless that exception is just too difficult to code in.  Enemies like amoebas and espers would work out alright in the oceans (if they were acid immune).  Now obviously I can see why migration from out of the oceans isn't allowed.  Although it would be interesting to have, say, carp in grassland ponds or occasionally get into a flooded room in a building that has a whale hiding out in it.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: So, what lore do folks have questions about?

« on: March 08, 2012, 09:03:18 AM »

Vengeful spirits bug me a little.

I know they're meant to punish you for your character dying....but it feels like it could be a step too far to have this character you've played for so long as the hero/saviour of your civilization and as soon as they die they become evil fiends pitted against the progress of your civilization.

I'd like to see more depth when it comes to spirits and the afterlife of our characters. That could be interesting to look into in the future.

I don't disagree on making the ghosts involve more, in that adding more depth to any element is rarely a bad thing.  But they don't bother me at present either.  I was actually very amused after my first death to see an angry spirit pop up.  It's a very rogue-like thing to do, and I don't see how any game with procedurally generated content can go wrong by stealing liberally from the Nethack playbook.


In terms of lore, I've always enjoyed the small, basically meaningless snippets that give you some hint about the nature of the world.  Like I'd love to find journals, working televisions, working radios, computers on blog pages, notes, signs, hastily scrawled graffiti, and anything else that would add a one-half to three sentence long bit of lore to my random explorations.  I think it'd be great to break into a modern home's bedroom and find a journal with some snippet about the end time for that person, or even just some slice-of-life thing like a todo list for the day that got interrupted by the end of the world.  Depending on how the content generation works, it could even provide a hint about upcoming bosses and stuff.  Something like a little hand written sign that says "Watch out! The thing in the next room is strong again flames..."

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Brainstorming some shifts to cooldowns

« on: March 08, 2012, 08:50:31 AM »

Right now the different cooldowns still feel kind of interesting.  At the very least, it has forced me into more diversity.  Since I value the top three slots in my spell bar significantly above the others, I have to keep a mix of colors there to avoid the cool down.  My current "general exploring" setup, for example, is Fireball|Miasma Whip|Energy Pulse.  I had tried to use Plasma Bolt as the first slot for a while, but it requires me to change out Energy Pulse since they're both white and the long cool down on my big gun kills the rapid fire spell.  My other big gun spells tend to be in entropy as well, which would conflict with Miasma Whip, so I tend not to use Plasma Bolt.

I think, for me at least, the limiting factor isn't so much the cooldowns (which force diversity) but the lack of spells in each color to fill out certain roles.  Nothing else in any color offers quite the same "sniper shot" power as Energy Pulse.  At least nothing I've found yet, but perhaps I need to tier up some other spells to play around more.  I don't know that I'd have even the incentive to do that if the color-cooldown didn't force some harder choices on my spell selection.