Disappointed, frustrated. What's the point supposed to be?

[Spud the Spud]

It's a stealth game, where you're stuck dragging along a bunch of non-stealth classes onto missions. It's advertised as "more than just run and gun" when in reality it is "we we throw bodies at you beyond your ability to survive if you attempt to run and gun so forget it, this is stealth plus select ambushing only". Kicking in the front door and going in guns blazing is a death sentence.

This feels like two opposing games were mashed together, and it doesn't work out so great. I bought the game because the Trese Brothers were so amazing on Star Traders, but for me this game seems like a dud. I just don't understand what they were trying to do, here.

[Trese Brothers]

Hi @Spud the Spud! Happy to discuss how your team is going about either strategy - sneaking or gunning - to help you improve that part of your game. We've had a number of players now share their mission-by-mission reports of gunning on every mission from the first turn, so it's absolutely possible.

I'm not sure what your strategy has been so far, but regardless of whether you sneak or shoot, you are a heist team so you need to move fast. Let's say -- stealth, combat power, and speed -- pick 2.

Here to discuss and help with strategy.

[Trese Brothers]

Also perhaps you hit a did in game okay if a mission like Cube Run, which players are saying is too much if a difficulty keep early. Key is know exactly where you were running into these issues, what turn it is and what kind of Sec Level you're freaking with

[drake_hound]

The game is flawed if stealth game, everybody should have limited charges of Body bags.
to make it tactical.

If it is a xcom like game, stop throwing unlimited reinforcement and timers.

Now it is just a flawed product that satisfy neither. yes beating it isn't the issue.
Also the turtorial is really lacking. most of the cash comes from loot boxes.
And that isn't even explained properly in the tutorial.

Maybe this example in hacking says it all, why disable when you can Attack and kill the IC?
But attack has a very limited charges. but in the end it saves a lot of time.

So all in all think what kind of product you want. cause now it is annoying and frustrating in all aspect.

Love the cyberpunk genre. but this isn't about the difficulty.
It is about the game concept that is flawed. it doesn't satisfy anybody but a small group of people who have inside knowledge of everything. like respec straight away into body bag.
Dump most of those buffs who don't do anything important. straight out silence all the weapons. and killing is better then sneaking.

[culsu]

You cannot just go wild on everything you see without any concern for the consequences, but if you are willing to pack grenades and be a bit quick about it, you can disregard stealth entirely.

It is not a mindless shooter, but there are a lot of options on how to deal with the levels. If you look at the situation, there are usually a few ways through it which you can pick from.

I do not usually like pure stealth games, and am not playing this one that way.

The most effective way to me seems to be to pack silenced pistols (which are great anyway as you can shoot or reload it with one action), kill anything you can without raising any awareness early on while you sneak to objectives and loot things, then once that becomes less convenient and they are starting to notice missing guards anyway regroup everyone and begin the murder spree while finishing up.

Mostly I ended up with everyone on their side dead while I finished looting, although sometimes I had a mighty pack of guards looking for me somewhere I was not while I made for the exit.

There were a couple of major firefights at the exit as well, when reinforcements entered multiple times from where I needed to go... and the occasional event where I decided I did want the loot enough to go end half a dozen guards I could have avoided to pick it up.

As an opening, once you have the points for it, there are two very powerful cyber knight talents. One of them buffs your team when you kill someone, and one of them grants everyone two action points. My cyber knight always goes first, so the opening move is to use that, and kill someone silently. Everyone else then has an extra move AP, and two extra normal AP. If others have movement skills, they can sprint a very long way and get near an objective or loot something, and if there are enemies everyone has an extra shot to help make the entrance a turn one massacre without any security increase.

Talents which disable security are also very helpful, but the real key is that once you are in a running multi turn firefight in full view of cameras and guards, with people calling their HQ over multiple guard fatalities and the AI freaking out and taking an action every turn as it witnesses the carnage, you are on a time limit, and you should have a clear idea as to where you are going, how long it will be, and what you can manage on the way.

The thing I really wish I had more of is hackers, as it takes a while to clear out a system if you want to fully loot it, and there are frequently two systems to go through. Whenever they resume content updates I have three now, so I should always be able to bring a couple to speed that up a bit.

It is not a stealth game though, in that while it is an option sometimes it does not seem like the intent that you always do this, and there is at least one mission where your goal is to kill everyone, and you will fight the equivalent of a pretty serious security response.

One more big thing to mention, which may not be immediately obvious in its implications if you are coming from other tactical games, is that you can move or shoot with any of your action points, and you have several. Shooting does not end your turn, and so it is viable to use a point to get into position (even out in the open) shoot someone, and duck back behind an obstacle such that it is difficult for them to get line of sight.

That allows you to really abuse the AI a bit, which you can and should do. It is not too hard to force them to either not advance upon you, or take poor tactical positions if they do so you can clean them up on your turn.

The other advice is that if you are going to get into an actual fire fight where they get to shoot back, half cover is for the dead. It is full cover, and consider using abilities. Better is not letting them attack you at all though.

[Trese Brothers]

Originally posted by drake_hound:

The game is flawed if stealth game, everybody should have limited charges of Body bags.
to make it tactical.

If it is a xcom like game, stop throwing unlimited reinforcement and timers.

Now it is just a flawed product that satisfy neither. yes beating it isn't the issue.
Also the turtorial is really lacking. most of the cash comes from loot boxes.
And that isn't even explained properly in the tutorial.

Maybe this example in hacking says it all, why disable when you can Attack and kill the IC?
But attack has a very limited charges. but in the end it saves a lot of time.

So all in all think what kind of product you want. cause now it is annoying and frustrating in all aspect.

Love the cyberpunk genre. but this isn't about the difficulty.
It is about the game concept that is flawed. it doesn't satisfy anybody but a small group of people who have inside knowledge of everything. like respec straight away into body bag.
Dump most of those buffs who don't do anything important. straight out silence all the weapons. and killing is better then sneaking.

Thanks for the feedback!

We're working hard on an updated version of the tutoria that will be a lot more clear and highlight specific UI elements.

You don't have to use Bodybag but I can see why you would choose to do so. A dead body has a 3-4 Turn timer, more than enough time for you to move on I think.

Carrying and moving bodies is on the roadmap as an ability that every character will have regardless of their Talents or Items. All of the animations are complete, we "just" need to wire it all up :D So, that will help :thumbsup:

[drake_hound]

Maybe I should explain it better, it isn't the body bag, but it is the timer.
Should explain it in the way of snowballing as developer.

The dead body 3-4 turns is plenty for a single map mission. but if discovered you loses 2-4 turns worth of security levels. so it keeps snowballing.
Even in Canivore going trough the sewer.. it should reset security level to 1. running there none stealth you already reach security level 1.

The whole game is set to snowball, you do everything right it is autowin.
You make one mistake it keeps snowballing.
Same way with hacking killing.. everything is set to snowball so hard it isn't funny.
And when you do one tiny mistake the snowballing to failure is also set extra hard.

That is what makes it frustrating. so a discovered body instead of adding 1 security threat (1 a turn at level 0) it starts to snowball to 2 a turn, to 4 a turn to unlimited reinforcement.
And no killing them and keep killing them isn't the issue... it just feels like a waste of time.

So tone down the snowball effect on good and bad things.
Since everything is build for multimap engagement.

Yes dragging body is a must to make it more like invisible inc.
But still doesn't solve the snowball effect.

[kensw]

Not everybody is going to like the game. That's OK. Everyone has different likes/dislikes.

[Zeel Ara]

Yea, everything pointed out here as "objectively" bad is just a matter of personal preference. They are design choices and they work just fine in accomplishing what they set out to do. It's okay to not like something, without having to be "right" about it. People like different kinds of challenges and experiences. And it's completely okay that you don't like these. I can 100% empathize with not enjoying the highly limiting and constantly escalating time constraints in this game. But that doesn't make them objectively bad. It means that they are made for people who like that kind of gameplay.

Saying that something has to be changed in order to make it more like Invisible Inc, is a case of begging the question. So is stating that snowballing is bad. All these points are based on the assumption that your personal preferences are representative of a greater universal truth. And as annoying as it may be, they really aren't.

[davea]

I'm sure there will be more difficulty tuning during the next 9-12 months of early access. The goal is not to have 15-20 bad guys chasing you all the time, but that sure seems to happen a lot now.

[Red Oktober]

I really hate this game at the moment. I thought I was buying a RPG (there is a tag on steam) ... where is the RPG? I cannot create my caracter ... I cannot create my squad ... Missions seem to be forced on me ... I got xp at the end of a mission but I have no idea if the xp I got are determined by the action I did in the mission (did the first mission 2 times and got 60xp each time) or if it is fixed for each mission (which would mean that XP are not the fluctuating value related to RPG character developement but just a counter of how many mission u have done before leveling)... I mean I wish I could refund since it is absolutly not what i thought it would be but it is already too late.

[davea]

I hope you recognized that the game is in early access? A lot of tuning will happen over the next 9-12 months. If you have a chance, please see the roadmap to see whether the game will develop in a direction you prefer:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1021210/discussions/0/3940146862823733288/

[agris]

Originally posted by Trese Brothers:

Originally posted by drake_hound:

The game is flawed if stealth game, everybody should have limited charges of Body bags.
to make it tactical.

If it is a xcom like game, stop throwing unlimited reinforcement and timers.

Now it is just a flawed product that satisfy neither. yes beating it isn't the issue.
Also the turtorial is really lacking. most of the cash comes from loot boxes.
And that isn't even explained properly in the tutorial.

Maybe this example in hacking says it all, why disable when you can Attack and kill the IC?
But attack has a very limited charges. but in the end it saves a lot of time.

So all in all think what kind of product you want. cause now it is annoying and frustrating in all aspect.

Love the cyberpunk genre. but this isn't about the difficulty.
It is about the game concept that is flawed. it doesn't satisfy anybody but a small group of people who have inside knowledge of everything. like respec straight away into body bag.
Dump most of those buffs who don't do anything important. straight out silence all the weapons. and killing is better then sneaking.

Carrying and moving bodies is on the roadmap as an ability that every character will have regardless of their Talents or Items. All of the animations are complete, we "just" need to wire it all up :D So, that will help :thumbsup:

Given that preventing bodies from being noticed by non-alert guards is highly impactful to lethal stealth approaches, are you concerned that moving bodies isn’t set to be implanted until 2024?

Feedback re: difficulty, talent balance etc may be skewed towards over-emphasizing body management prior to that.

Even if the animations aren’t rigged, providing a non-animated WIP implementation of moving bodies prior to 2024 could help ensure you get higher quality feedback in the related areas of the game in the interim. You could even use timers to approximate the time you expect the character models to take while executing the pick up / down animations.

[Trese Brothers]

Originally posted by agris:

Even if the animations aren’t rigged, providing a non-animated WIP implementation of moving bodies prior to 2024 could help ensure you get higher quality feedback in the related areas of the game in the interim. You could even use timers to approximate the time you expect the character models to take while executing the pick up / down animations.

That's definitely possible. At this time, given all that we can see and all the conversations we're having, we're not overly concerned that it will be available a little later in the EA. 2024 is really not far away. We'll definitely keep an eye on it, as it is a roadmap item, and shift priorities as needed.

You can also equip a helpful item to take care of the issue, Bio-Recycler.

[drake_hound]

Originally posted by Trese Brothers:

Originally posted by agris:

Even if the animations aren’t rigged, providing a non-animated WIP implementation of moving bodies prior to 2024 could help ensure you get higher quality feedback in the related areas of the game in the interim. You could even use timers to approximate the time you expect the character models to take while executing the pick up / down animations.

That's definitely possible. At this time, given all that we can see and all the conversations we're having, we're not overly concerned that it will be available a little later in the EA. 2024 is really not far away. We'll definitely keep an eye on it, as it is a roadmap item, and shift priorities as needed.

You can also equip a helpful item to take care of the issue, Bio-Recycler.

I would really like that moving the bodies moved up in priority list.
to make atleast the stealth part functioning, I understand it isn't a priority.
Cause the more difficult people find the game, the longer they play it.
But in otherwise very good concept, where majority of the time is spent in Turn Based Combat, having neither really functioning or entertaining, isn't really a good promo even in Early Access.

Also any chance of random mission/map generator, instead of handcrafted missions.
(this one is tricky do not know how much resources you have)
For endless play.

[meanw000gene]

Another vote here for "game is fine like it is".

The premise is that you are a small team going up against a much larger, more powerful security force. Like Trese Bros said, you can go quiet or loud but what's most important is that you move quickly and decisively toward the objective (and then the exit). This is not like every other TB tactical game where you slowly creep across the level and defeat all of the enemies... you are on the clock, so you have to be "eyes on the prize" which I think is much more exciting.

Re: body bag / moving bodies, instead of trying to stealth kill every guard you encounter consider whether it's better to just sneak by and leave him alive. Often you'll find killing is unnecessary, you're just used to always doing it from playing other games. But in this game you know that a guard going missing will eventually increase security, so you should be avoiding it when possible, just like you try to avoid cameras and stuff.