Topics

1

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Battlegrounds

« on: March 17, 2012, 12:00:06 PM »

Rather than continue in an old patch thread i Shall bring the quote with me.

Has anyone else tried battleground missions this patch? Since my allies and base aren't dying in two shots any more, they seem more possible, but it also still seems like the difficulty is rather high. I've only found one of them so far; they don't like to seed for me. But from what I've seen, it seems like the towers get almost infinite range on their shots, which makes it pretty hard to complete because you're racing to bring them down before their endless barrages wipe out your base from the far end of the field.

I just had another go at battlegrounds....(this is a couple of continents in so all the enemies are unlocked)

on The Chosen One, they are still impossible.

on Hero I just managed to complete one, but
A) it took me 3 in-game days
B) this was with the boosted health orbs
and C) It was only really possible through "cheating", by which I mean every so often i used splashback to push a clockwork probe high in to the air, the probe then just sits motionless in the air, more importantly your allies group motionless beneath it so that you can get a good group going rather than just watching them run to their doom. (when you want your allies to attack you just destroy the probe)

One way or another it was not my idea of fun.  I mean as noted above, on my difficulty of choice they are impossible so I have been actively avoiding them, so I don't want to profess too much of an opinion, but the question is does anybody actually enjoy these at the moment?

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

« on: March 13, 2012, 06:34:38 PM »

I'm putting this here rather than straight into mantis (though I am going to put at least two up), because I want people who play on other difficulty levels to comment on how they find them.

Personally I find the ocean shallows, specifically the cave systems, to be the hardest combat in the entire game, by quite a margin, to put some numbers up....

(Tier 2)
Carp - Attack 210.9, Health 36,000
Blue Whales - Attack (see below), Health 90,000
Blue Whale spawn - Attack 14.1, Health 4,500

These are the basic enemies in the oceans, to get these numbers from anything else it would have to be either a boss or a late game unlocked enemy.

Now there are at least two actual issues (the aforementioned ones going in to mantis), firstly, giant boss rooms mean HUGE numbers of monster spawners, i've got a screenshot of a cave with 18 spawners in it, and spawning enemies like the above that's like fighting a dozen boss battles at once. The second issue is that Black Whales still seem to do melee damage, and 957 a hit is a tad excessive.

But to get back to the basic point, I feel the oceans need some intermediary enemies, jellyfish, blowfish, trilobites....aliens.....anything, something so that the current enemies can be the rarities that they should be.
I say it like this because individually the enemies are both interesting and fun, if tense, to fight but what are you supposed to do against a swarm of enemies that do 200 damage a hit?

I shall note that I do not think that the fact that it gets easier with the "good swimmer" enchant mitigates any of this, as a basic region it needs to be fun without the enchant.

Personally, I think we need at least two things in addition to new enemies, one is a way of getting easier movement without the enchant, a spell that grants it for a few seconds say.
The second is a way of floating upwards, perhaps an "emergency flotation device" as a stash item, something to allow easy escape without having to do the functional, but entirely crummy feeling, riding of platforms. Ooh, or do a "transmogrify into dolphin" scroll....

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

« on: March 06, 2012, 04:15:23 PM »

This is probably moving slightly outside the scope of spell balance but it effects it never the less.

Having just decided to give plasma bolt a try, the first thing I notice, given that I play with cooldown decrease enchants, is that I am getting screwed out of 0.1 of a second by the global cooldown.

Is there a reason that it exists?

The best argument I could come up with for it's existence was to prevent lots of abilities going off at once and "flooding the system", but given that there a number of other cooldowns this would require said abilities to be in different colours and categories, which doesn't seem like something someone is actually likely to try.

Of course, there is a possibility that it's there specifically to make people choose which type of ability they are using at any given moment, but it seems sort of unnecessary.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Difficulty and Character improvement.

« on: March 04, 2012, 03:25:08 PM »

I'm apologising beforehand if this comes of like a rant....

I'll start by saying that I am probably in the minority by playing on the highest difficulty for both Combat and Platforming, which is why to some extent this a query about what others feel about it rather than assertions to change it.

"Before I manged to post it Edit": Having read the patch notes this is even more of a concern.

The more I play, and consequently the better I get at the game, the more I feel that there is a fundamental disconnect between Difficulty (as in the players experience of the game rather than just the setting) and the way character improvement currently works.

Character improvements (both upgrades and enchants) undercut the difficulty of the game significantly, because the game is essentially balanced for NOT having them, for various good reasons.

Now I'm going to point out somethings I see as being fairly obvious, if I'm wrong feel free to correct me but as I understand it the system works like this...

Tier one spells do the "correct" amount of damage to a tier one enemy.
Tier two spells do an overpowered amount of damage to a tier one enemy.
Tier one spells do an underpowered amount of damage to a tier two enemy.

That is all fine, but if I can increase the damage output of my spells by 100% via upgrades and enchants (which is very easy) before even getting out of tier one, then the system collapses.

Enemies that would taking the "correct" damage are now being overpowered, and enemies being overpowered before are being slaughtered, and the tier increases do nothing to stop this, there is now no point at which I am underpowered (excluding deep caves).

And that's just for damage, which is pretty bad, but if you look at health similar things apply. Say my base character can take 3-7 shots (depending on enemy) before dying, with relatively little investment that is now 6-14, then 9-21 etc. and because, as I figure the way the system seems to be working is that the only way to take extra damage from an enemy is if the enemy is a higher tier than the world, then Tier changes don't effect this either.

Now obviously, what does change as you play is the enemies attacking you, and to some degree this balances it out, but not by much.

The reason I actually started investigating this is because It occurred to me, as i reflected on playing the game on hard, that I had been putting the difficulty up to maintain the challenge not to increase it.

Now, lots of complaint up there, but this is a discussion. so...

Had you noticed the game getting easier?

Do you care?

The latter is probably the important one, personally as I near the end of a game (any game not just AVWW) I inevitably end up experiencing a sort of profound disappointment when I realise that the difficulty has peaked, and that the game will just get easier from here.

The reason I started this thread is because, I haven't actually started "playing" the game yet, I am still for the purposes of testing making what my mind knows to be poor choices, currently I am trying a build with all upgrades in damage, and it is fairly hard to survive, my hatred for clockwork probes knows no bounds, but I know I could half the difficulty just by putting one point into health.

Are people like me supposed to nerf themselves for the purposes of a challenge, or should the system be changed?

I shall note that aside from lowering the percentages on upgrades and enchants quite significantly (as in a 30% increase requiring every bonus you can muster) , I have no ideas what can be done.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Spell Balance

« on: February 29, 2012, 05:56:19 AM »

I was going to post this yesterday, but then i discovered it was 1am (GMT) this morning.....anyway, I was going to complain anyway, but if as 0.586 thread claims you are about to do a press push and bring in a bunch of new players then I thinks it's a good idea to do a spell balance pass.

My basic concern is that playing a game with say fireball or forest rage as your basic offensive spell choice is almost like playing a different game to playing with ball lightning, combat is essentially doubled in length and its much easier to get swamped by enemies.

Variety is of course a good thing, but the massive discrepancy in damage output between the basic single target direct damage spells is crazy, Ball Lightning literally does double the DPS of the others.

Now, there are a number of views to take on this.

1) Ball Lightning is horribly overpowered, and fireball et al should be the baseline for the combat experience

2) Fireball et al. are horribly underpowered, and Ball Lightning should be the baseline for the combat experience

3) Fireball et al. are simply there as finishing moves, first shot with ball lightning to do most of the damage, quick second shot with fireball to kill them off (if this is true it needs to be implied somewhere, even to the degree of claiming in the spell description that they are not supposed to be main combat spells)

For the record if you want to look at what i would consider some well balanced spells then Throw Rock, Tidal Pulse and Energy Pulse are all good choices, they have unique benefits that balance out their costs and weaknesses.

Personally I am leaning towards options 2 or 3. If you consciously create a set of spells as finishing moves, then fair enough, as long as each element has an automatically available (which is what stops Throw Rock excusing Forest Rage) Ball Lightning equivalent then it will work quite well. and lets be clear I do just mean equivalent, it just has to have a similar DPS, or other affects that balance it out. The basic requirement is that people aren't gimped for picking the wrong elements, which I'm sure we can all agree with.


EDIT: I added a sentence portion to the last paragraph, noting that other affects can balance out damage.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / What keeps YOU playing AVWW?

« on: February 28, 2012, 07:58:13 AM »

This might seem like a bizarre question but, whilst considering whether to put some suggestions on to mantis the problem that they would all be very art intensive crossed my mind, and art takes time and time is limited, but further than that they all expand an area of the game that there is no guarantee others want expanding,  so without wanting to seem pretentious...

What keeps you playing AVWW? or rather what would you prefer the devs spent their time on?

Personally whilst I do enjoy the combat, I would much prefer, over and above but not to the exclusion of adding new spells and enemies, that the devs spent their time on making the world itself more interesting to explore, to compare with a couple of other games...

Minecraft: actually adventuring in Minecraft is a surprisingly good example of what i mean, construction aside some of my favourite memories of Minecraft are of interesting geography, of stumbling across chasms that lead to the bottom of the world, of exploring a cave to discover it contained a vast ruined mine.

Knytt\Knytt Stories: For those who haven't played it, it's a 2D platformer which is almost solely about exploration, "combat" as it exists is about avoiding hazards rather than anything else, but the real meat of the game is simply experiencing the world you are in, all that the various powers you acquire do is allow you to explore more freely, to find the cities on the mountain or the ghosts underground, actually finding these things gains you nothing except the joy of discovery. If you can't tell I really like these games.

To compare with AVWW, we don't even have mountains, I mean to give one of my aforementioned suggestions, I think it would be an entirely memorable moment for players, if whilst exploring a region you randomly find a mountain and upon climbing the mountain instead of it just being the normal regions backgrounds what you actually saw was the fractured world in the distance around you.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Clockwork Probes

« on: February 26, 2012, 09:38:56 AM »

How are the supposed to behave?

Are they supposed to fly, well slide around, like they occasionally to do in normal gameplay?

or are they supposed to roll along the ground like they seem to do in battlegrounds?

The reason I ask is because they look very strange whilst moving off the ground, but it's hard to judge whether it's a bug or not, because there is nothing in the enemy design that implies one or the other

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Secret mission generation

« on: February 23, 2012, 09:22:55 AM »

Before I report something as a bug...

The first time I discover a secret mission area it is guaranteed to have a mission right?

I ask because this has been fairly inexplicit

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / A question about regions and time periods

« on: February 14, 2012, 07:46:14 AM »

This isn't really a suggestion or request, but should we be expecting more regions per time period at some point in the future?

I mean why, for example, don't we have "Abandoned Towns" from the other time periods?

The original thought behind this was that each continent should be divided in to regions before it's divided into time periods, by which I mean, the map generator assigns an area as a "city" or "forest" or whatever which is then cut into the different time periods, which I think would help both the feeling of it being an actual continent and the feeling of time being fractured. but obviously most of the regions required for that don't exist. Also I couldn't find out whether the world is supposed to be fragmented in space as well as time, which would sort of throw the idea out.

As an incidental point, because I was looking at the continent map too much, I also noticed that there are no rivers in the game, though admittedly I can't think of a way to put them in the game in a way that makes sense. perhaps just background art.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / How are people playing the game?

« on: February 04, 2012, 11:07:27 AM »

I keep almost posting a number of complaints, but they are so obvious and major that i feel like i must be doing something wrong.

So how are people actually playing this game?

how are people managing to upgrade their spells to the second tier?
does everyone just upgrade fireball and lightning bolt and ignore the other spells?
does everyone just struggle through without upgrading?

as some examples, as I see it Coral and Sea Essence are impossible to acquire, at least I've not found a way to survive acid long enough to unlock coral and Sea Essence just doesn't spawn.  Umbra Ember, is a tier 5 ingredient for a tier 2 spell, this cuts out Creeping Death, Energy Pulse and Tidal Pulse. so that's 3 of the 5 "basic" spells gone.

lightning bolt is all down to actually being lucky enough for charred amber to spawn, as opposed to just lots of welkin gel and useless buildings, though unlocking it is easy enough. in the last few of my worlds (pre-buildings) the only reward (despite having unlocked a number of rare commodities) was welkin gel, I have no option but to play through the missions which not only gain me nothing but increase the enemy progress to the next tier, in the vain hope that the next mission to spawn will help me.

In the welkin gel filled worlds mentioned above I have been forced in to tier 3 with no way of getting most of my spells to even tier 2, and by that point playing has become an act of tedium rather than enjoyment, its made worse by the fact that simply treading water actually makes the game harder. tier one spells can fairly easily deal with tier 2 skelebots fast enough to complete a battleground mission, but throw in those tank things and clockwork probes and it turns into trench warfare, with neither side doing sufficient damage to actually progress.

With the addition of buildings this is even worse, as you have diminished the opportunities to gain rare commodities significantly, and as it seems to me that you have to acquire the initial buildings and people(skills) in a pretty specific order most of the building rewards are useless as well.

The guardian power's also strike me as terrible it costs me 40ep to gain a spell that gives me 2ep? or the other powers which take 40ep to acquire and simply give me the opportunity to spend another 40ep on a mission (I'll admit that's an assumption having never actually been able to use them).

and rant over....

So what am I missing? other than a way to resist acid damage which I would assume is hidden in a stash somewhere.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Spell Tiers in the new system

« on: October 05, 2011, 04:39:30 PM »

Being an almost theoretical concern at this point I am not putting this on mantis yet, but..

I think that the range for a spell tier might need to be increased from 5 levels to 8-10. there are other solutions to my concern but that strikes me as the simplest solution for the time being

Why? Lets take an example, loosely based on my current character.

I am Level 45
I use Ball Lightning IX
I use Fireball IX
I use Forest Rage IX
I use Energy Pulse IX

At this point I should start trying to acquire Level 10 gems to upgrade my spells, except this requires, One Ruby, One Opal, One Jade and One Citrine (other ingredients aside).

The odds are I shall level up twice getting each gem, so before I even get three gems I should already being trying to acquire Level 11 Spells.

My options are continue getting the Level 10 gems knowing that by the time I have acquired them they will be out of date, or go straight for the level 11 versions, and create a situation where I have to level spells alternately otherwise they get left behind.

Now currently there aren't many spells in the game, so it's not as big an issue as it could be, but by the time you add utility spells, defensive spells and whatever else the devs have coming for us into the mix you are going to need a lot of gems to upgrade with not really much time to get them.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / What Spells do people use?

« on: October 01, 2011, 07:54:26 AM »

Whilst I realise at this stage of the beta there isn't a huge selection of spells, I am still interested in seeing whether people are actually using the variety of spells.

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4436

This is inspired by that brief discussion, because whilst I'm not going to argue for homogeneity, having spells that are different that nobody uses (because they either hard to use, inefficient or just unnecessary) seems pointless.

So to start with my personal selection of spells (as in the ones I actually use) is limited to Ball Lightning, Energy Pulse, Ride the Lightning and Ice Cross.

To use the Circle of Fire as an example of a spell I discarded as useless, it's harder to aim than Ice Cross, shorter range than either of Ball lightning or Energy Pulse, and generally has insufficient damage to cover the odds of missing.
For a more direct attack example there is Launch Meteor, fun sounding but the same criticisms can be levelled, it has a poor damage-mana ratio anyway but even if it's increased it won't be as useful as Ball lightning or Energy Pulse, due to both range and trajectory.

The low mana-low damage spells are more interesting one, because whilst on the surface useful for destroying small or nearly dead enemies, they do so little damage that the majority of it comes from your character making it a better idea to simply use lower levels of Ball Lightning or Energy Pulse.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Initial Opinions

« on: September 28, 2011, 06:14:46 AM »

As a base line I shall say that I have been enjoying the game, and indeed spent much of yesterday playing it. Once it has some flesh on it's bones I sense being addicted to it, frankly it reminds me of ActRaiser and that is not a bad thing.

I have a couple of  specific complaints,

1) The camera should endeavour to keep your target on screen, it's irritating to be fighting a boss that you can't see just because you are walking away from it. This also extend to amoeba bosses, which are almost always off screen.

2) The level map (the top left corner one) can be stupidly large, I have had a few that covered 25% of the screen , when zoomed in they covered a good 45%, at very least they need transparency, as do most of the other UI elements actually, I have had occasion were all have got in the way.

That said here are my initial general criticisms though I shall try and avoid things attributable to being a beta (balance, lack of variation etc).

First is combat, or I suppose "Monster Interaction" as the game seems unsure how it wants to approach it, i note that this is about non-boss combat

The fact that many, if not the majority, of spells are combat related seems to imply that combat should be a major part of the game, as does both the quantity and existence of monster spawners (monster spawners generally being a mechanic to ensure you always have something to fight\have to fight something).
But on the other hand, there are no rewards for fighting any given enemy and with mana being a limited resource (consumables aside) the options are essentially

A) Kill monster, gain nothing, lose ammo and time
B) Jump over monster, gain nothing, lose nothing

Now as a general point I am fine with not gaining exp from non-boss enemies that would make it too easy to grind levels, but I would recommend that monsters become a source of resources. It's that or make mana regen so that shooting them doesn't feel like a waste of ammo.

My second criticism is with adventure level generation.

My personal feeling is that the levels are too big, and contain too many buildings, which are also too big.

Rather the level generator doesn't seem to take into account that there are a lot of levels to visit, I do not need 8 buildings in every screen for 4 screens, there are hundreds of levels, and I will probably visit a tiny fraction of them at best the way it stands, give me smaller levels and better variation, so that it feel less like drudgery walking through them.

The average level should be 1-2 screens tops, the longer ones should be reserved for being actually representative of something (major towns, forests, etc), the normal level should be empty, for want of a better word, with a chance of having a couple of small buildings (hamlets), or caves. Obviously chance exists so that sometimes an otherwise innocuous single screen could contain a link to a giant dungeon, I wish to the game to be more digestible not more repetitive.

What I wish to avoid is the sense, that I get at the moment, of your lone tiny settlement being inexplicably surrounded by towns.

hmm, I think that is probably enough ranting for now, I have some suggestions for settlement building as well, but will let it get fleshed out a bit more before levelling judgement.

Now back to playing