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So for a little while we've realized that regen is too OP, and enemy damage is too low to provide a deterrent to just running through enemies.





So, we're going to adjust stuff for NORMAL mode, so that one of the four poll options below becomes the case;

http://strawpoll.me/5858963

In all four cases, we'll be increasing the damage the player takes from touching enemy sprites, to the point that the player is instantly stunned by making physical contact with an enemy, so they can't just blow through levels and abuse the invincibility frames.

The differences in regen though that we're considering (again, for normal mode, easy mode will stay the same) are;

1) Reduce regen to a crawl (right now it regens at 10 HP a second, it would be down to 1 HP a second)
2) Reduce regen to about 5 HP a second, but prevent it from regenerating past 50% of Talia's total health
3) Remove regen entirely, but heal Talia for each enemy she defeats
4) Remove regen entirely, but fully heal Talia at the start of each map/room

Let us know what you think in the poll!

We'll also have a full list of stuff that we're planning to adjust/change sometime later this week :)

(We're also considering removing save pads for normal mode and making you be able to spawn at the start of each room, similar to Easy mode, if we make these changes, but that's up in the air right now)

EDIT: To clarify, the enemies would only instantly stun Talia on contact if they weren't doing anything else. For example, if the half demon swipes at her, it's not insta-stun, if the flying demon is swooping, it's not insta-stun, it would only be stun if you're basically trying to barrel roll through the whole game while enemies are just standing there.

Comments

Vent

Maybe I'm lazy, but I enjoyed the current Regen rate, seeing as it was still possible to get overpowered or even killed in some rooms (especially with the lava pits), although I can understand the problems with players constantly finding some hiding spot and camping out while their health regenerates. It completely destroys the threat from most enemies, especially since Talia can simply avoid so many of them outright. I think that the first option is best: enemies are now more of a threat, it's possible to get overrun, and Talia has more emphasis to try and avoid enemies (if not outright defeat them). The polls all mention that enemies would instantly stun Talia on contact, though: I'm not sure how I feel about that, either way. I'm willing to give it a shot as a mechanic, though.

FutureFragments

They would only instantly stun Talia on contact if they weren't doing anything else, i.e. If the zombie swipes at her, it's not insta-stun, if the flying demon is swooping, it's not insta-stun, it would only be stun if you're basically trying to barrel roll through the whole game while enemies are just standing there.

Anonymous

Why not have the option of which regen mode you want? Sometimes, you just want to run through an area, especially while we're still in beta.

FutureFragments

The problem with this is that we would need to code in extra stuff we wouldn't even be using for the final game, which is extra wasted time, but even moreso than that, the problem would be player perception. example, a person reviews a demo, and then they give feedback, but is that feedback based on having regen or not, based on a type of regen or the other, etc. :P

FutureFragments

We absolutely have to have her take that much damage on collision, because otherwise there is zero threat to her in the level to just run right through enemies and abuse invincibility to be able to run right through them. (To note, in games like Megaman, collisions with enemies do HUGE damage compared to everything else for this very reason) The way the game's programming works, a person would need to stand still in front of an enemy to take an attack intentionally, and most people will not do this if they're trying to hurry for a level; this would also allow enemies to group up on them if they tried this tactic, overwhelming them. Additionally, right now collision damage does only about 10-15% of life if I remember right, so it's really minimal damage. She would need to heal to 50% at least; if she only heals to 35%, the minute she got hit by most of the attacks, she would be nearly dead, and 30% damage is what it takes to stun her, so yeah :P people would get massacred in that case. I definitely agree with you about the regen going at a crawl being the worst idea out of them though, and it's likely we'll do the "vampire" thing (this actually fits perfectly in the lore, believe it or not, for reasons that would be end-game spoilers), and possibly a combination with the "only regen a small amount" aspect on top of that somehow. For now though we'll just be testing it in our builds to see what we feel works the best, etc. but it'll likely be one of those two per the votes and our own thoughts about it.

Anonymous

Reducing regen to a crawl imo only exacerbates your problem, and that problem I believe is that waiting around for health is the solution to poorly handled enemy engagements. unless regen is removed completely, there will always be people willing to wait around, thus hurting their own play experience.

FutureFragments

I agree on this also; we're likely going to remove regen, it's just how we're going to remove it that we're considering.

Anonymous

So then the poll isn't really binding? because as I saw it, the poll shows two options with health regen in it. though my original post applied more to the "regen to a crawl" method, though I disagree with regen outright.

Secular Reason

Is it possible to just have this as an option on startup? Like how you choose to either use "save pads" or else start at the room? Some may want to use save pads but keep the regen, others like me may want to restart in the room they died, but lose the fast regen.

Anthony Thomas

I think the main problem is the lack of incentive to kill enemies. No currency, power ups, experience, etc that's another reason why its far better to just dash through than waste time on them.

FutureFragments

When we do polls, we pretty much have a general idea in mind already where we'd like to go with the game, but we also have alternatives that we know are viable. If all of the poll results are prettty close or there's a multiple way close race, then we generally end up going with what we originally thought was a good idea. But if one pulls out WAY ahead of the others, then we generally go with that one. An example is the boss level; we were going to spend a lot of time adjusting the blobs and their firing rate and being real meticulous about it, and leave the walls practically untouched. But then when something like 95% of the votes were about the WALLS being the pain in the ass, we switched gears and figured out a way to make the walls a lot easier to deal with, etc.

FutureFragments

We could see if this would be an option, sure, heck, we could even make three difficulties or something, or even have save pads in all rooms and do a lives system, we're pretty much debating all the choices right now :P

FutureFragments

Yeah, this is another good point, and also why I personally want the "get health or regen from enemies" thing too etc.

Anonymous

Same here, there is no reason to kill the enemies, they represent little more than speed bumps. - Also I'm not convinced by the whole idea of "kill enemy get regeneration" its counter intuitive and counter productive. If I'm low on health I don't want to go even near an enemy. What you would want is to avoid it if possible; In the case you can't you're going to be REALLY careful and try to exploit some SAFE opening. Which would in turn make the game really slow as you carefully grind over the enemies 1(or few) at a time. - What I think could be better is to throw the concept of health out the window and go for a more "lore friendly" gauge; Stamina, Concentration or Mana. Explanation: Talia being a petite female mage (at least in comparison with most if not all enemies) the only thing separating her from disaster(our fun) is her magic shield which is fueled by her Stamina,Concentration, Mental Acumen, Mana. Having such a strong defensive magic is consuming so she really does not have much to spare therefore even if she wanted to use strong offensive magic (charged shot) or space altering magic (dash) would nearly or surely stun her as she overloads her body, mind, chakra, ect. - But she is not helpless, as the best war-mage of her kingdom she know how to harness the remnant energy of her defeated enemies taking it for herself and using it to boost her magic for a short amount of time. - What this all means is put a REALLY small energy bar that can probably take 2-4(depending on mob) hits tops and she goes K.O. this bar regenerates REALLY fast but everything consumes it and most good things (charged shot, dash, double jumps) deplete it completely. Yet killing an enemy gives a temporary boost to the max energy(harder or stronger enemies bigger longer lasting boost) which in turn gives the player more leeway to play more aggressively and faster always looking to refresh the boost by killing more(maybe even data banks give permanent small energy boosts as her knowledge of how that world works increases, maybe giving the enemies some R&D gives you a temporary regeneration debuff as Talia recuperates from the trauma and shrugs it off.

FutureFragments

I appreciate the idea and writeup, but the complexity of such a system would overwhelm most players; for an RPG, something like this would be great, but a platformer doesn't fit too well with having multiple stats to take care of like this. We would possibly use something like this for the sequel, which would be more of a traditional metroidvania, and having this many stats to take care of and so forth would be a lot more effective with that, etc. The perma-stat boosts would also be something more for the metroidvania game too, as we don't want to alter Talia's base stats besides giving her the utility/damage powerups for the individual abilities she gets after each boss, again to keep the gameplay more simple/balanced. In general though, we'd like to get rid of regen as a whole, and as far as being afraid of enemies, remember you have range; you don't need to get near enemies to kill them, which is why you shouldn't be afraid to kill enemies to get health :P

Anonymous

No problem. I'd be honored if you used my idea for the sequel. Also guilty as charged I really like complex and challenging systems which could turn off most players.

FutureFragments

Right, I mean, don't get me wrong, I like that stuff too, it's just that something that complex we'd rather save for a sequel so we don't overwhelm ourselves for what we've already got planned for this game, lest we end up being one of those games stuck in development hell for like 10 years :P

Anonymous

Perhaps use something similair to what Urielmanx7 is using; In order to get the animations for a potential Gallery Mode, you have to defeat the enemies so many times to unlock different animations?

Ryo

I think 2 has great potential in that it can open the door for more interactions in the game. If you slow down the regen and make it so that they only recover to a certain point, you could make it so that Talia would have to get her health or energy from elsewhere to fully recover. You can have certain areas on a map that can restore her health making the player explore a bit more to find em as well as having her do a "syphon" or "leech" from enemies. To balance it though i think it should only be applied to the human enemies ,cause i mean who knows what might go wrong if you tried to take stuff from the demons and crossbread failures you encountered, like the flamethrower grunts in the suits on the fire level, but to be able to do it you would have to use Talia's normal attacks, say bout 3, to make them enter a stunned state similar to Talia's when she takes too much damage. Then Talia could have a small h-scene with them at that point (similar to the wounded grunt, oral, etc) which would be her taking their energy for herself.

Ryo

It would also give more incentive to actually fight enemies, which could play into Urielmanx7's idea of fighting the enemies for gallery events

FutureFragments

I wouldn't wanna do this because it would frustrate less skilled players, and it's also a time-sink :P