@ Dbaum: Thank you for the detailed and interesting response. Frankly I wasn’t aware that developers of this game are active in this thread, it was a pleasant surprise.
I was planning to post my feedback on the official game’s Steam forum later today so it would be visible to developers, but now I am not going to do it - you have already seen it and responded in length, and there is no point in posting overall negative impressions on the main forum - I want you guys succeed financially, not to possibly turn off some of your potential buyers. >;)
Ok, regarding your response in general - I understand and sympathize with your reasoning. In fact, being software developer myself, and for the last two years - game designer as well (I am currently working as project lead for educational game for Cisco), I strongly suspected that likely you guys have just ran out of money/time at the end, because I’ve assumed that many of these issues I’ve raised you guys are well aware off and would want to address yourselves, given the resources and opportunity. I am glad to see that it is indeed the case. (naturally I meant “glad” not because you’ve run out of money, but because from your post it is clear that many of these issues were not a design choice. Meaning there is hope that you’ll either address it in this game or in your next project)
Ok, let me address directly some parts of your response.
Ideally - surely, that would be a preferable solution. The problem is that currently there is not enough game content/tools for the player (mage in our example) to throw into battle once he ran out of mana. The wands are rare and tend to burn out quickly, same with potions. There are no scrolls or spellbooks in the game. Archery is not a viable option for dedicated mage. So once he run out of mana, he is pretty much stuck. (unless he has a powerful pet, which are not available in the beginning, and don’t really help with repetitiveness much)
That’s actually one of the main reason the gameplay feels so repetitive - due to the lack of content/alternative solutions. It could be addressed to some degree by adding more useful items, perhaps new classes of items, as well as increasing depth of the game mechanics, which is relatively light in some areas.
For example - you might consider adding possibility for the players of worshiping one of the several gods, each with its own set likes/dislikes, special powers, and changing “piety” level based upon players actions and how often the call upon them for help.
That would hit several targets at the same time - break up repetitiveness of the gameplay to some degree, make characters more different and allow further customization of the character beyond limited “one point per level toward one of 7 skills” option, and give players more interesting alternative tactical solutions. To prevent such “Religion” from being overpowered and to make it different from being just another “8th skill”, it could be implemented based on “piety” - which goes up when player does things that God like and/or when he kills monsters, and which goes down when player call upon his god for help. (Gods don’t like to be bothered by mere mortals)
Hell, depending on how fleshed out you would want to make this religion system, the religion system can add tons of content to the game, perhaps even enough to make full-blown DLC that youcould sell for 2-4$ on Steam, called “Gods and Prophets” or something… :)
If you like, perhaps you would be interested to check this link for possible inspiration. It’s from the game called Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, has the best religion system from any RPGs or roguelike I’ve seen, and is an amazing game in general.
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?title=Category:Gods
Anyway, that’s just one possible example. The key thing is that it would be great for the gameplay to give more depth to the game mechanics in the areas where it is currently pretty “light”, and to add some viable and interesting “alternative solutions” that you’ve mentioned.
The way I see it, is that you have a very nice foundation in your game. There is just not enough meat on its bones at the present, in addition to some correctable flaws, which is the main reason why gameplay feels stale after initial “Wow!” factor passes. I agree with you, it can be addressed with patches, to the large degree.
- Monster spellcasting had some big problems. We upped it, added more, and it ought to happen more. Egregious, admittedly.
More monsters will appear sooner or later, but to offer a poor explanation: At one point we had a tiny budget and it was blown on sprite art in 2006. Since then, nothing. And the sprite format is archaic and horrible. We’re hiring another animator to do new sprites in png format (and Nicholas needs to write the png animation system for monsters).
It’s good to hear it. Speaking of monsters - since most of them currently act very similar to each other, perhaps you could emphasize the difference you’ve mentioned in your post about different vulnerabilities, and tie it to the game mechanics and feedback tot he player. For example - after player defeats 20 of the particular “Doodle”-type, he learns this doodle’s weak spots. Meaning in tooltip for this mob-type below mob’s description play will see the list of vulnerabilities. After he defeats 50 (or whatever) of them he further become expert doodle killer, getting a small bonus damage against this mob, maybe earning some flavor title.
Also about mob images - it would be great to add some visual indicator when player is fighting “quest” mob. As it stands now, writing a short line in a message log about “57th Dredmor Company” is not a good solution, since it is missed 99% of the time. And speaking of message logs - it could really benefit from being be scorollable and/or expandable.
- Hmm, are the spells limited? I mean, compared to the wonderful and absurd spells of those old D&D games, yeah, we’ve got a brittle and limited system that’s largely about assigning various types of damage in various ways.
It’s rather far from ideal on the whole in my mind, and if (when?) I get a chance to take really part in the core gameplay design this is going to be different. I tried to make it interesting with things like Deathly Hex, Nerve Staple, Golden Ratio, Dragon’s Breath all doing something different. Problem is, no one uses Deathly Hex and Golden Ratio is overpowered. Many changes to these (and others) in the next patch.
Compared to some contemporary games that are about crunching DPS, are the spells so weakly designed?
Yes and no. Let me clarify what I meant - the spells you’ve designed are nice and versatile enough, with some very interesting ideas sparkled here and there. The magic schools have its distinctive favor and don’t overlap too much. The problem in my mind is that there is just not enough of spells available to any practical character builds.
Even when the character is playing mage-type, like I was playing, realistically you are unlikely to take more then 2, maximum 3 magical schools, because you need all these mage support skills to play strong mage. And because the more you take the more overlapping they become - diminishing results. So you’ll get maximum 14, maybe 21 spells, once your char is fully developed. Out of this 2/3 are outdated by better high level spells, from the remaining half quite a few overlap and some are just too weak or impractical. So realistically you’ll end up using 5-8 spells at most. And that’s for the mage character, for any hybrid character you’ll regularly use even less spells. Since you can’t learn new magic schools, and since there are no scrolls, spellbooks, wands (spell wands), or any other mechanisms in the game for you to have even limited access to the spells from other schools, that lead to very small practical spell selection.
(to be continued…)
