Bad design decisions

[Mortac]

It seems to me that the main difficulty with this game is avoiding killing yourself. I play a Wing Diver and quite literally it's the explosion and area damage that kills me over and over again. If this could be somewhat controlled that'd be one thing, but it often can't. Usually you have a flying frog diving straight into you out of nowhere just as you release a shot, so you kill yourself. Or a red ant or a frog picks you up, and you have to shoot it, but if you have explosive weapons equipped, you have to kill yourself to get loose. And don't get me started on those beetles.

And who's idea was it to take control of the camera randomly to look at things? That has killed me countless of times. Please fire whoever came up with that idea because that person has no clue on how to design games.

And why is it that increasing the difficulty level must increase friendly fire damage? This is an arcade-style game where you run around and shoot things. Nowhere is it good design to have killing your team mates as a way of adding difficulty. Some friendly fire damage I could understand, but when you literally one-shot people that isn't fun gameplay. It doesn't add anything good to the game at all. Friendly damage could be halved and people would still be equally careful, but it would be less frustrating at times.

Finally, all this running around to collect loot boxes is also horrible design. Literally half of the time spent on a map is running around looking for boxes. Why can't you just auto-collect them, or at the very least have a 10 meter radius for picking up armor and weapon crates? It's just sickening how much time is spent picking up boxes. If it's not fun, don't add it to the game, it's as simple as that. Collecting boxes is just too time consuming.

[dog]

no

[Vℓα∂y]

Originally posted by Mortac:

It seems to me that the main difficulty with this game is avoiding killing yourself. I play a Wing Diver and quite literally it's the explosion and area damage that kills me over and over again. If this could be somewhat controlled that'd be one thing, but it can't. Usually you have a flying frog diving straight into you out of nowhere just as you release a shot, so you kill yourself. Or a red ant or a frog picks you up, and you have to shoot it, but if you have explosive weapons equipped, you have to kill yourself to get loose. And don't get me started on those beetles.

Uhh did you bring 2 explosive weapons? You should be bringing a lance, rapier, phalanx quite often as wing diver those are like her meta weapons. Also with flying frogs just fly around them and wait for them to land, there tricky enemies but when land there lot less dangerous than when there flying.

Originally posted by Mortac:

And who's idea was it to take control of the camera randomly to look at things? That has killed me countless of times. Please fire whoever came up with that idea because that person has no clue on how to design games.

You can turn this off in options/settings menu during in game, its called Camera Effects and same with screen shake which I think is called screen shake.

Originally posted by Mortac:

And why is it that increasing the difficulty level must increase friendly fire damage? This is an arcade-style game where you run around and shoot things. Nowhere is it good design to have killing your team mates as a way of adding difficulty. It's just stupid and annoying. Some friendly fire damage I could understand, but when you literally one-shot people that surely isn't fun gameplay. It doesn't add anything good to the game at all.

Because you can really chees the game, shoot napalm onto your ally, shoot explosives at him, throw airstrikes at him and you kill enemies, it just leads to exploit strats which dev wants to avoid.

Originally posted by Mortac:

But all this suiciding from explosive weapons really makes me want to stop playing. It's annoying as fu because things dive straight into you out of nowhere so it's often impossible to react to. All it does is instantly kill yourself. Terrible design.

Are you new to the game and did you just jump straight onto hardest and inferno, this enemy isn't that bad on hard and below. On Hardest and inferno they do step up quite a lot in difficulty.

Originally posted by Mortac:

Finally, all this running around to collect loot boxes is also horrible design. Literally half of the time spent on a map is running around looking for boxes. Why can't you just auto-collect them, or at the very least have a 10 meter radius for picking up armor and weapon crates? It's just sickening how much time is spent picking up boxes. Do the devs think this is fun? If it's not fun, don't add it to the game, it's as simple as that.

You can just use trainer, just make sure to avoid using it in public an if you insist on using it on public make sure it known in your room that you are using it. I myself don't mind the collecting but I get how others don't find it fun, some levels are not that well design on loot collecting I admit that.

[Dust]

I don't know how to handle my weapons and I keep getting killed by them, and I'm way too frustrated to learn how to remedy to that. Who would've known that banging my head against a brick wall repeatedly wouldn't work ? Therefore, it's the fault of the developers for putting too much confidence in my ability to learn from my mistakes, and it is terrible design.

Plasma weapons are fine. Plasma weapons are fun. Learn how to handle them.

[Velmoria]

Blowing yourself up is also part of the fun.
It is a dumb,surprised & funny moments that can happen anytime.
There even goes saying:
"Don't call yourself EDF until you blew yourself by ally NPC walk in front of you."

On side note, please handle explosive weapons with extra care.

[Sir Duckyweather]

Originally posted by Velmoria:

Blowing yourself up is also part of the fun.
It is a dumb,surprised & funny moments that can happen anytime.
There even goes saying:
"Don't call yourself EDF until you blew yourself by ally NPC walk in front of you."

On side note, please handle explosive weapons with extra care.

Indeed! It wouldn't be EDF without hilarious blunders.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=727843060

[Mortac]

See here are the issues with your "solutions."

Originally posted by 🌼Vℓα∂y🌻:

Uhh did you bring 2 explosive weapons? You should be bringing a lance, rapier, phalanx quite often as wing diver those are like her meta weapons. Also with flying frogs just fly around them and wait for them to land, there tricky enemies but when land there lot less dangerous than when there flying.

You "should" be bringing. No, what I "should" be bringing are the weapons I want to use.

Originally posted by 🌼Vℓα∂y🌻:

Are you new to the game and did you just jump straight onto hardest and inferno, this enemy isn't that bad on hard and below. On Hardest and inferno they do step up quite a lot in difficulty.

Did you even read my post? I didn't say enemy difficulty is the problem. I said killing myself is. When you have enemies such as flying frogs that dive into you from above while you're killing something else, it is unavoidable. When you have beetles that ram into you from behind, it is unavoidable. The thing is that if you fire off your weapon just as they do that, you kill yourself.

Originally posted by 🌼Vℓα∂y🌻:

You can just use trainer, just make sure to avoid using it in public an if you insist on using it on public make sure it known in your room that you are using it. I myself don't mind the collecting but I get how others don't find it fun, some levels are not that well design on loot collecting I admit that.

The solution to stupid design is to cheat? No thank you.

Originally posted by Dust:

I don't know how to handle my weapons and I keep getting killed by them, and I'm way too frustrated to learn how to remedy to that. Who would've known that banging my head against a brick wall repeatedly wouldn't work ? Therefore, it's the fault of the developers for putting too much confidence in my ability to learn from my mistakes, and it is terrible design.

Plasma weapons are fine. Plasma weapons are fun. Learn how to handle them.

And you don't know how to read, apparently, since you insinuate that I'm complaining about things that I'm not. I'm saying the issue is mobs diving from outside of your view straight into a shot just as you fire it, and the weapons do so much damage that you usually one-shot yourself.

And the main issue is currently the Dust Canon or whatever it is called, not the plasma weapons, but they also suffer from this issue.

[Dust]

Originally posted by Mortac:

And you don't know how to read, apparently, since you insinuate that I'm complaining about things that I'm not. I'm saying the issue is mobs diving from outside of your view straight into a shot just as you fire it, and the weapons do so much damage that you usually one-shot yourself.

Having a modicum of situational awareness is also a part of learning how to handle explosive weaponry. Really didn't think this needed saying, but here we go. You have a minimap that tells you where your enemies and your allies are. Use it.

[Velmoria]

EDF 4.1 had it worse where ants or spider body parts (legs, lower body, even head) scattered and thrown toward us, and often it gets in the way of my explosive shots.
My Fencer had to equip gatling just for the sake pushing their corpses & body parts.

EDF 5 doesn't seem scattered that much, I haven't had any case blew myself by flying corpses.
At least the ants corpses somehow allowing bullets to pass through after certain time before despawn.

[Honorable_D]

Got no sympathy for you blowing yourself up. You either need to get better at using the weapon or don't get yourself into situations where you'd blow yourself up to begin with. Your own lack of skill and poor judgement is the issue, not the game.

Or you know, bring weapons that are effective for the mission you are playing. Obviously your choice of explosive weapons isn't very effective, is it? You tool.

[Mortac]

Originally posted by Dust:

Having a modicum of situational awareness is also a part of learning how to handle explosive weaponry. Really didn't think this needed saying, but here we go. You have a minimap that tells you where your enemies and your allies are. Use it.

Yeah because keeping track of when a flying frog will dive into your face at all times is easily done in practice. Sounds good, but it doesn't work that way.

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

Or you know, bring weapons that are effective for the mission you are playing. Obviously your choice of explosive weapons isn't very effective, is it? You tool.

It's perfectly effective in all occasions except when things randomly dive into the barrel of your gun from off-screen in a split second.

I stand firm that the friendly fire damage in this game is overdone. It doesn't add any "fun" to the game. Some damage, sure, but when you one-shot yourself in a split second after clearing a map for 20 minutes. Meh. Pointless feature that doesn't work well in a game like this.

[Dust]

Originally posted by Mortac:

Yeah because keeping track of when a flying frog will dive into your face at all times is easily done in practice. Sounds good, but it doesn't work that way

I never said it was. It's a skill to learn. Like many things in this game.

I had that problem at the very beginning, I don't anymore.

[Mortac]

Originally posted by Dust:

I never said it was. It's a skill to learn. Like many things in this game.

I had that problem at the very beginning, I don't anymore.

Right. I'm sure you keep looking at that map in the most hectic of moments just in case one of the red dots somewhere close to the center is a flying frog.

Anyway, I'm not nerdy enough to bother. I just want to get in and shoot things every now and then. It's not my idea of fun, and in my opinion, good game design is adding fun things into a game, not annoying things such as sudden one-shot mechanics.

[Honorable_D]

There is a time and a place for large, high damage AoE weapons—being swarmed by flying tadpoles or the fast rolling pill bugs ain't the time or the place. You have to realize this, yes? You don't honestly think you should be able to use the same weapon on every mission against every enemy type ALL THE TIME? Yeah? If you honestly do then it is pointless to continue this thread.

We've all blown ourselves up multiple times, but then we learn when it is and isn't safe to be using those types of weapons. AoE weapons are very powerful in the right situations and I'm fine with friendly fire being one of the risks you have to consider, you apparently are not. Opinions gonna opinion I suppose.

[Velmoria]

It's not sudden one-shot-kill-yourself though. It simply means your HP is too low compared your weapon explosion damage, which already being reduced by difficulty scale (50% on hard).

You can try using Plasma Cannon & Rapier setup.
Rapier is great for both self protection & murder red or green ants. Each hit immediately stagger enemy, including the dark red ants in Hardest & Inferno. Reload time only 0.5 sec.
There also other great close range weapons with their own use & advantage.

For flying frogs (a.k.a tadpoles), I usually prefer using Spark Vine.
It has bit range, often instant kill, can penetrates & very energy efficient. Alternatively lance is also good. For more range, I prefer Thunder Crossbow.

Plasma Cannon also my favorite, but as mid & long range sniping weapon.
Plasma Heavy Cannon on other hand is only for certain target.

[Dust]

Originally posted by Mortac:

Right. I'm sure you keep looking at that map in the most hectic of moments just in case one of the red dots somewhere close to the center is a flying frog.

I do keep looking, in conjunction with kiting enemies. The only times I don't really bother to look are when, well, I'm not wielding any explosive weaponry.

Originally posted by Mortac:

Anyway, I'm not nerdy enough to bother. I just want to get in and shoot things every now and then. It's not my idea of fun, and in my opinion, good game design is adding fun things into a game, not annoying things such as sudden one-shot mechanics.

The only thing I'm getting from your comments is that good design is when the game doesn't try to hinder you in any way so you can blow things up freely, that good design is when the game doesn't expect you to learn how to actually handle the city-leveling weapons that it gives you.

Like I said, just learn to use explosive weaponry and everything that comes with it, or stick to more traditional weapons until you're replaying a mission where you know there isn't going to be anything flying in your face at an unfortunate time. You're gimping yourself until you do either of those things, fun-wise.