Messages

1

AI War / Re: AI War state of the game

« on: November 03, 2012, 02:55:45 PM »

@HitmanN, from the 5.074 patch notes, August 30th of this year:

=== AI Reinforcement Focus ===

* AI planets now pick a primary, secondary, and tertiary type of ship to focus their reinforcements on. 
** It's not purely random, sometimes it picks ships that fit certain roles.
** When picking a new reinforcement ship for the central pulse or a non-special-forces guard-post-pulse, it has a 10% chance to pick any available ship like usual, and a 90% chance to pick one of its focus types.  When picking a focus type, it has 3 times as much chance to pick the primary as the secondary, and 3 times as much chance to pick the secondary as the tertiary.  If that doesn't make sense, don't worry about it.
** Whenever the AIs unlock new ship types due to AI progress, all AI planets "reroll" their focus types.

Thanks for the info. Started a couple of games quick and looked at the adjacent planets' lineups... and yeah, looks like there is some variance now. I definitely need to try a proper game sometime soon. xP

Did this change also cover starships, guardians and guard posts? It's hard to tell in early game since there aren't that many of those around, but I hope they also have similar variance in distribution.  Also, did the change affect the ships' placement on the planets in any way? Focused groups of specific ship types defending a specific structure, that sorta thing, or are they still spread around equally/randomly?

Sorry to hijack the thread with the questions. I'll leave my inquiries at these so you guys can stay on topic. ;p

2

AI War / Re: AI War state of the game

« on: November 03, 2012, 01:26:15 PM »

First, let me start off by saying that I haven't played a proper game of AI War since something like 4.0. Started LotS couple of times, momentarily tried AS, and so on. Always had too much other stuff to focus on to get back to the game proper. So my in-depth knowledge of current balance is pretty limited.

AI War's fundamental problem comes down to a problem of lethality.

I strongly disagree here. Fleet-to-fleet combat lasts minutes at most. This seems about right. And having higher lethality would mean those sub-fleets on the AI planets would die against your blob even faster, without the small chance to support each other they have now. (also, doesn't Blitz/normal/epic style do this, if you want to change the lethality?)

Increasing lethality would, I think, increase blobbing. Tactical strike teams would be cut down before they could do anything useful.

Finally, I do support making the planetary-level stuff more interesting. I just don't think there are any fundamental problems with the game.

This is exactly what I feel too. Lethality is pretty ok. For me it is as long as I play on Epic. Anything faster is just out of my hands on tactical level. For me to use anything else other than blobbing, I need time to perform those strategies, maneuver the ships, observe the results and change the tactic while the results are happening. The less time I have, the less incentive there is to try anything creative. Blobbing isn't ideal, but it works decently, so it's easy to rely on that in such situations.

And yes, planetary-level stuff could be more interesting. My biggest issue has been that despite the AI having some variety in its ship usage, it seems to be a jack-of-all-trades on most planets.

For instance, if AI has ships A,B,C,D,E in use, on an AI planet with 15 ships, I'd tend to see combinations like:

AAA
BBB
CCC
DDD
EEE

or

AA
BBB
CCCC
DDD
EEE

...and so on. The AI always has a bit of everything. This does mean that it makes sure it has no weakness. Which in turn becomes its weakness. The AI seems to be powerful only in total numbers, and rarely in having upper hand in specific scenarios and tactics.

What I would like to see on the AI side is more variance in the ship distribution. Combinations like

AAAAAAAA
B
CCCC
D
E

or

AAAA
CCCCC
EEEEEEE

Because player is limited to certain number of each ship type, the AI could occasionally have a planet that simply overpowers the player's favorite strategy by sheer number of a specific one or two ship types that counter it, forcing the player to either use a completely different strategy, or try to use less-ideal ship types together with the primary tactic, to improve the odds of success.

What if, for instance, one AI planet had been seeded a preference of anti-blobbing. It would prefer primarily ships that deal AOE damage, or generally hurt multiple ships at a time. Or what if one planet had been seeded an artillery preference, and it has a higher distribution of long-range weaponry, compromising it's mobility in turn (not completely, but partially). Or Anti-starship preference. Or... well, you get the idea. These would not need to be defined on every planet, but it would be nice to see different planets having different sets of preferences, that are considerably more noticable than the current distribution variance.

Anyways, just thought I'd share the idea. These preferences could change according to what the player does, but they'd be a sort of starting point for the AI. Strong in something, instead of average in everything.

Another benefit of this would be that the AI's ship selection is more limited on these occasions, and picking out strategies against each ship type is much easier than in scenarios where the AI has tens of different ship types. Seriously, I'm not going to bother tactics against such a mess. Blobbing should suffice.

Again, I don't know if things are different in end-game, because I haven't played a game past taking a few planets since late 4.0, but every time I feel like I'm going against jack-of-all-trade planets, and it's been very... uneventful.

3

AI War / Re: Bonus Ship Ommission File

« on: October 31, 2012, 08:31:50 AM »

Not  because they are particularly OP or UP, but rather just because I cant stand their mechanics.

I would imagine the mechanics would be the reason for most omissions. Instead of ship omission, why not just continue with mechanic omission. The lobby already has toggles in the Ships tab that turn off stuff based on their mechanic or role. If those aren't enough, why don't we just see what more toggles might be wanted. There's plenty of room for more toggles in there.

4

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.003-6.004 "Fortress-size It" Released!

« on: October 29, 2012, 07:08:09 PM »

Note to self: Don't cause Keith to experiment right before release.

5

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: My 2 Cents

« on: September 27, 2011, 10:43:52 PM »

But maybe the bat form could be limited to a navigational tool, preventing you from casting spells until you revert to human form?

Or the bat could have its own bat-specific spell(s). Maybe a low-damage bite attack, which also sucks a tiny bit of HP from target if it's a living/organic one. Or something like that.

6

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: A Valley Without Wind #13 - Beta Gameplay Footage Part One (Video)

« on: August 16, 2011, 06:09:55 AM »

If there's already been talk about the following, then sorry for repeating. (I haven't followed the forums very actively lately...)

What I found very distracting and inconsistent is the way the player character moves. Not talking about the animation, but the way the character needs to speed up for a moment when starting to move, but when stopping it's like hitting a wall. It looks unnatural, and I know I would find it irritating to not have a consistent feel to the movement when playing.

As I see it, either the stopping should also take a moment of deceleration, or the acceleration time when starting to move would need to be significantly reduced to match with the ability to stop instantly. Visually I would prefer the former (maybe some sliding, even more so downhill), but gameplay -wise the latter would probably be better, so that the player can focus on other, more important aspects than waiting for the character to speed up while having bats on his a**. 

7

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: A Valley Without Wind's Switch To Side View -- The Big Picture

« on: June 20, 2011, 01:41:07 PM »

One of the games I thought of when considering the switch to side-view was that one you were working on with the person jumping through the tower and the Diablo-esque gameplay, etc.  It was one of the big points in favor of me thinking that this approach (side-scroller and RPG-ish) could work.

w00t. I made a difference. xD lol.

I resumed working on Twisted Tower too, recently. There's definitely room for more hack'n slash platformers with randomly generated content out there.

In any case, I like platformers, as long as there's some RPG elements involved, so this should turn out interesting.

I am absolutely an enormous fan of platformers, but I'd be really reluctant to characterize this in that way.  I'll respond to that in the detail post I'm working on, actually.

Hmm.. ok.

I do see the character standing on something (I consider that a platform), and it's from a side view (side-scroller). Seems pretty straightforward to me.

8

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: A Valley Without Wind's Switch To Side View -- The Big Picture

« on: June 20, 2011, 01:20:08 PM »

I had a hunch this could turn into a side-scroller. I think Keith mentioned about you guys wanting to do a platformer game some day, back in LotS dev days or so.

In any case, I like platformers, as long as there's some RPG elements involved, so this should turn out interesting.

9

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: When will you purchase AVWW?

« on: May 25, 2011, 07:12:53 AM »

Will wait for some feedback on beta/release first, probably. Looks fairly promising though, so if I really like something I see before release, then I might even pre-order. Mostly interested in multiplayer at the moment. There's definitely room for more exploration-based co-op games.

Most likely I'll buy at some point, just to support Arcen Games.

10

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: I really think you need some way of keeping track of things behind objects

« on: March 04, 2011, 10:20:59 AM »

SH's controls weren't definitely horrible, I've seen a lot worse, but for me it was still the thing that took away that 1 point from them being a 10/10 rating game.

Oh the topic of scary games, I've also liked the Condemned series, although it was more about surprises rather than suspense. Mainly because of it focusing on melee weapons, which adds a more personal feel to the combat, unlike other similar first-person view games. My favorite event in the series is definitely in Condemned 2, the level after the plane crash, with the lodge and the huge bear.

I'm also reminded of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth from several years back. I played the PC port and found it very atmospheric, although maybe a bit too much focused on the stealth gameplay. Still, there was constantly a feel of pressure that the whole village with its crazy folk were after you, all the while also being surrounded by the supernatural. That, and the main character pretty much going insane near scary events.

Overall, I think I slightly more prefer first-person view in games like these. It's a much more involving feeling to have the enemies come at you in first-person view, especially in chase sequences.

11

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: I really think you need some way of keeping track of things behind objects

« on: March 04, 2011, 09:42:27 AM »

That said, I still go back to SH2 every so often, because the controls aren't bad... they're just not... immediate, I guess is the word.  You turn slowly, you hit slowly, it's hard to aim your weapons with huge precision, that sort of thing.

I'll pitch in my opinions here too, quickly. Staying off-topic, sorry.

SH3 is the first in the series that I played. Finished it twice in fact. Then I tried SH2, and it wasn't bad, but I never finished that one. Not sure why, but I just dropped playing about halfway through, and never resumed. Probably had something more interesting to play at the time.

In any case, the series is good, but what prevented it from being awesome for me actually were the controls. Clumsy, slow and sometimes restrictive or borderline unresponsive. A game with a good atmosphere AND slick controls would've been a blessing.

Games with restrictive controls is one of my pet peeves. I hate it when I perform an action, and I cannot cancel the action half-way, even if it would realistically be possible. For instance, reloading in Fallout 3. If I press to reload a weapon, I can't access pib-boy, switch weapon or do anything but walk around until the reloading has finished. This is particularly annoying with stuff like Rocket Launchers, when it can take several seconds. At the point where I have a rocket in hand and am about to put it in the weapon, why can't I just cancel, put away the rocket and not reload the launcher, if that would allow me to switch to another weapon faster? Why do I have to wait three seconds for the rocket to go into the weapon, by which time the enemies are in melee combat already (which I was able predict, and thus wanted to cancel reloading), making the rocket launcher pointless, and I still have to switch to a safer weapon, usually costing me at least a bit of health. Even more annoying is reloading a laser pistol (or was it the rifle, anyways), when after inserting the battery, the character sometimes has to open the cartridge slot and slam the battery in again, before being able to shoot. It's a nice effect of a poor condition weapon, but I sure as hell don't want to spend an extra second looking at stuff like that when I want to be shooting the bad guys instead. Every time I die because of such an event increases the likelyhood that at some point I've had enough and just quit playing the game. Showing me visual effects and motions to enhance immersion is fine, but it should not affect my controls in gameplay-affecting way. When I lose in a game, I want to lose because the bad guys defeated me. Not because the game prevented me from fighting back or evading.

I don't mean to say that players should be able to perform anything at anytime, but if the actions are ridiculously long, include unnecessary extra actions and/or often restrict any other activities at the same time, without being able to cancel, it's just frustrating to control. This wasn't a huge problem in SH games though, I think. It was even possible to strafe while swinging melee weapons, unlike in a lot of games where a melee attack stops the player's movement. It's a been a long time since I played the SH games, and I don't remember exactly how the controls were, but I do remember that I found them lacking in finesse, sometimes lethally so (for the main character). Still, the atmosphere was so awesome that the controls weren't an enjoyment killer.

So, to me, clumsy controls do not contribute to atmosphere or immersion, but take away from enjoyment. Not saying I need to be able to perform ninja moves and jump around like a superhero or anything either. Just that restricting a character's available actions to very basic moves is much better way of adding a clumsy feel than making performing those moves a pain.

That's my opinion anyways.

12

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Achievements in AVWW?

« on: February 27, 2011, 11:29:30 PM »

My point was just that games require goals and without them you're not playing a game. So once I've beaten HL2 ep 1 a time or two there's not much more gameplay in it without further goals.

If a game can't be fun without constantly having something new to do, then that's usually a sign that the game itself just isn't fun. That, or like I implied earlier, today's folks are just too needy about their games. Something that wasn't an issue when video games were (relatively speaking) being invented. Admittedly though, I've grown stingier too, since the NES days when playing through that Nth Mega Man game the exact same way again and again was just fun as it was. Everyone else seemed to think so too, heh. Good times. It was admittedly nice to play through the game without dying or somesuch, but achieving that wasn't the reason to for playing the game. The real goal was just 'to play through that fun game again'.

Now the game doesn't have to give these to me, I can make my own if I want to.

That's actually a good sign. The game is actually so good that you don't need artificial motivators from the developers or other players to enjoy it. The only motivation you need is yourself and your own desires. It also tells a lot about the game's flexibility if you can go about doing the goals you yourself design for yourself.

But it's nice to have something like ' the one free bullet' achievement to give me a suggestion for a new way to enjoy the game if I just can't get enough Gordon. And it also clearly notifies me when I've done it, which makes it feel more official.

I actually rather hate it when everything needs to be so official. The sort of "If you don't do exactly what I tell you to do, then you haven't really played this game properly" feel kinda ticks me off at times. Achievements shouldn't be the reason to play a game. It's just a sign that the developer was so lazy that instead of actually trying to make the game fun and enjoyable for the playing's sake, they had to throw in instructions disguised as achievements, about what to do to "officially" finish the game completely.

With that said, as a whole, I like achievements, as long as they're not too specific, or something you can only achieve in a very specific manner. Basically, when I can achieve them without hugely deviating from whatever way I want to play the game. For instance, stuff like "find 75% of all secret stuff in the game" is great. You don't need to fetch specific items, but any of the game's secret items, until you have a total of 75%, a combination of whatever items. You can go about looking for whatever stuff you want to, instead of just something very specific, like "find all 100 Item A's in the game", which is just tedious and forced at best. It just pushes the player to focus on one specific task/item, which limits the overall gameplay. Of course, if the game itself was actually fun enough, you'd find all 100 Item A's without even caring about whether it's an achievement or not. It'd come naturally. That's what developers should aim for. Making the game enjoyable and fun as is.

Whether it's the stated goal of the game or a side quest or achievement you have to be doing something.

Quite obvious. Definitely not what I was debating about. What I'm talking about is the game/developers forcing specific tasks on the player, instead of the goals being so well integrated into the whole process that you're not even focusing on the goals as much as you are on just having a blast being there and smashing buttons in a satisfying way. That's a sign of a genuinely fun game. Now, if you can make a game like that, then you can build anything else on top of it. You can add achievements, hi-scores, whatever. They're just bonus on top of an already fun game. But again, none of the extra stuff is really required for a game to be fun. You do need a goal for a game, but it does not need to be the reason to play the game.

13

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Achievements in AVWW?

« on: February 27, 2011, 07:45:16 PM »

On my phone so I can't type out a reasonable counter argument at the moment. But could you provide an example of a game you have fun in while pursuing no goals at all? And don't say Minecraft unless you've never explored or built any structures, since those are goals after all.

If you get down to it, then just starting up a game is a goal in itself. Your goal is to spend time with something, you start up a game. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!

That's a bit off-topic from what I was thinking of originally though. Basically, back before internet, games were generally played to have a fun time. Certainly there were "goals", but even if there weren't any left, people still kept playing the games because they were considered fun way to pass time. Yet video games became more and more popular and evolved.

It's just the new-age attitude and stinginess that's made people require more in the way of achievements and such rather than fun time from their games.

I'd take a super fun game with with limited goals over a boring game with bazillion goals any day. If a game isn't fun, you wouldn't even go for the goals/achievements/whatever. Thus, having fun is more important than goals. But... if more goals makes the fun part more fun, then it's a plus. Just not really required.

14

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Achievements in AVWW?

« on: February 27, 2011, 12:25:06 PM »

With AI War, we used achievements partly as a way to keep track of which AIs you'd previously beat, which was useful.

That was about the only thing I did with the achievements in AI War, actually. ;P

15

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Achievements in AVWW?

« on: February 27, 2011, 12:16:20 PM »

You've got to have some kind of goal to keep playing a game, otherwise you're just doing the same thing over and over for no good reason.

While I somewhat like achievements and even sometimes play games just for them, I think that the above statement is false.

You don't need goals to have a good time playing a game. And having good time with a game is a good reason to play it.