Feedback wanted

[Bonne]

Hi everybody,

now it's more than two weeks after release, so time to collect some more feedback from those of you that already played the game for a while.

We're looking for all things you like, dislike or even miss. Stuff like game modes, items, maps or whatever you want to mention. We will evaluate it and see if it makes sense for Elemental War 2 or if it might become part of a future project. But everything helps of course :)

[stretch611]

Expect a busy thread

1a) Can we have tower information show up in more places? e.g. when a tower is selected, maybe hovering over the name in the lower left or icon, maybe have it show the tower description?

1b) When using tab to put items in a tower, can we possibly see the current damage/speed/rate of fire displayed as well as an indicator of how much the slotted items affect it?

2) With paths, can we use a second muted color for inactive paths? I played graveyard for the first time today and was blindsided by the second path because I did not notice it when I looked over the path when I started the level initially.

Thanks Bonne...

Oh, by the way... I was able to start a level on the steam deck... it seemed to do ok on the preset... not super fps by it did work fine. I'm sure a little tweaking and it will perform well. But, I am not familiar with gamepad controls and I did not know how to place towers. Also, my poor eyesight does not do well with text on the deck so I know tower placement when just over one bad map pixel will be impossible for me on such a small screen. (I like my steamdeck a lot, but my eyes and that small screen kill a bunch of otherwise playable games.)

[Bonne]

Originally posted by stretch611:

Expect a busy thread :jestinfection:

I hope so :)

Originally posted by stretch611:

1a) Can we have tower information show up in more places? e.g. when a tower is selected, maybe hovering over the name in the lower left or icon, maybe have it show the tower description?

Hm, I'll see what we can do here.

Originally posted by stretch611:

1b) When using tab to put items in a tower, can we possibly see the current damage/speed/rate of fire displayed as well as an indicator of how much the slotted items affect it?

How exactly do you imagine it? When you selected the tower instead of just hovering it you will at least see the change in the stats when (un)equipping the item. Or do you mean something like the global stats at the bottom, but instead for the currently selected/hovered tower?

Originally posted by stretch611:

2) With paths, can we use a second muted color for inactive paths? I played graveyard for the first time today and was blindsided by the second path because I did not notice it when I looked over the path when I started the level initially.

Thanks Bonne...

Well... the idea was to have a mean surprise for the players by spawning a new portal and so a new path later in the game... so it's actually on purpose to not show the path :D I'll think of showing the inactive paths after having reached that point once, so you get the surprise, but just once.

Originally posted by stretch611:

Oh, by the way... I was able to start a level on the steam deck... it seemed to do ok on the preset... not super fps by it did work fine. I'm sure a little tweaking and it will perform well. But, I am not familiar with gamepad controls and I did not know how to place towers. Also, my poor eyesight does not do well with text on the deck so I know tower placement when just over one bad map pixel will be impossible for me on such a small screen. (I like my steamdeck a lot, but my eyes and that small screen kill a bunch of otherwise playable games.)

That sounds good from the performance side. I mean I think I read it's at least as powerful as the old Xbox and the game runs on that one, so with proper settings it should be fine. Readability on small screen... well, nothing I tested due to the lack of a Steam Deck and as it doesn't run on Switch properly, but of course it's even worse in your case then. Will check it at some point when we have a Steam Deck here.

[stretch611]

Originally posted by Bonne:

Originally posted by stretch611:

2) With paths, can we use a second muted color for inactive paths? I played graveyard for the first time today and was blindsided by the second path because I did not notice it when I looked over the path when I started the level initially.

Thanks Bonne...

Well... the idea was to have a mean surprise for the players by spawning a new portal and so a new path later in the game... so it's actually on purpose to not show the path :D I'll think of showing the inactive paths after having reached that point once, so you get the surprise, but just once.

Well, It worked.
It's fine if you want to leave it as is... IMHO, leaving it hidden just gives an advantage to people who are familiar withe map over those who rarely (or haven't) played a specific map. Of course being mostly single player this "advantage" does not mean much and can be removed just by playing a few games on the same map.

Originally posted by Bonne:

Originally posted by stretch611:

Oh, by the way... I was able to start a level on the steam deck... it seemed to do ok on the preset... not super fps by it did work fine. I'm sure a little tweaking and it will perform well. But, I am not familiar with gamepad controls and I did not know how to place towers. Also, my poor eyesight does not do well with text on the deck so I know tower placement when just over one bad map pixel will be impossible for me on such a small screen. (I like my steamdeck a lot, but my eyes and that small screen kill a bunch of otherwise playable games.)

That sounds good from the performance side. I mean I think I read it's at least as powerful as the old Xbox and the game runs on that one, so with proper settings it should be fine. Readability on small screen... well, nothing I tested due to the lack of a Steam Deck and as it doesn't run on Switch properly, but of course it's even worse in your case then. Will check it at some point when we have a Steam Deck here.

Admittedly, the lower resolution of 1280x800 helps a lot, but yes, it does pack a bit of a punch. It easily beats out my $1000 laptop I bought in August in every hardware aspect except screen size and SSD capacity.

Funny that you mention the Switch though... The aspect of console/arcade emulation is quite popular on the steamdeck. I am interested in this mainly for 80's era arcade games; which I can see well enough even on the small screen.

But while I have not used it for this, you can actually emulate a Switch on the SteamDeck and from what I hear it works well. Normally emulation occurs a few years later due to processing overhead, but in the case of the switch it works fine because, well, Nintendo isn't really known for its bleeding edge top of the line hardware, even in new equipment, quite the opposite actually.

[stretch611]

For the tower when adding/removing items I though that something like this might be nice under the 3 item slots:

          Base     Change     Total

Damage    1600      +800      2400
Range      10m        0m       10m
Speed      2/s      -25%     1.5/s

Really nice to have a change field for each slot, But I know that screen real estate and processing of the gui might make it a real pain to do. Of course, design was never my strong suit. I'm just looking to see how well items actually help a tower.

And FYI, my intent on the extra tower information is the same... mostly a reminder telling me what a particular tower is doing in both real damage and effects so that I can make a good judgement on its worth. (Plus, I'm still learning the differences from EW1 and trying to remember everything as I have not played in a while.)

[Bonne]

Originally posted by stretch611:

For the tower when adding/removing items I though that something like this might be nice under the 3 item slots:

          Base     Change     Total

Damage    1600      +800      2400
Range      10m        0m       10m
Speed      2/s      -25%     1.5/s

Really nice to have a change field for each slot, But I know that screen real estate and processing of the gui might make it a real pain to do. Of course, design was never my strong suit. I'm just looking to see how well items actually help a tower.

Will talk with our UI designer if/how we can provide these informations.

Originally posted by stretch611:

And FYI, my intent on the extra tower information is the same... mostly a reminder telling me what a particular tower is doing in both real damage and effects so that I can make a good judgement on its worth. (Plus, I'm still learning the differences from EW1 and trying to remember everything as I have not played in a while.)

Same here. Simplest approach would be as you mentioned to show the original tooltip on hover... a little tricky though because I changed that tooltip functionality wise to work in combination with the wheel menu, but no big problem :D

[RET STUDIO]

can you add endless mode for this game like orc must die 3 ??? and after update rootweave not effect with buffer tower is really boring

[Bonne]

I'll check if I can adjust the rootweave <=> buffer combination to work again for the next update.

Endless mode is on our idea list for a bigger update, so absolutely possible we'll add it :)

[stretch611]

Bonne,

When you hit [ESC] the game from the main menu, the games asks if you want to quit to desktop. At this point, the only option is OK, there is no cancel to stay in the game.

[stretch611]

The teleport towers no longer work on elementals like they did in EW1. I'm fine with that... But, does the attempt reset the cooldown?

I had a teleport tower near the exit portal And I summoned the 2nd earth element. With nothing else on the board, a smaller earth elemental spawned behind the first. After the initial element exited (and cost me 5 lives) the teleport tower turned its attention on the smaller spawned in element and did not teleport it despite the amount of time passed since the last successful teleport.

Personally, I would expect the cooldown to only reset after a successful teleport and the spawned in element to be affected.

[Bonne]

Originally posted by stretch611:

Bonne,

When you hit [ESC] the game from the main menu, the games asks if you want to quit to desktop. At this point, the only option is OK, there is no cancel to stay in the game.

The cancel is just clicking on any other tab again. It's just no explicit cancel button.

[Bonne]

Originally posted by stretch611:

The teleport towers no longer work on elementals like they did in EW1. I'm fine with that... But, does the attempt reset the cooldown?

I had a teleport tower near the exit portal And I summoned the 2nd earth element. With nothing else on the board, a smaller earth elemental spawned behind the first. After the initial element exited (and cost me 5 lives) the teleport tower turned its attention on the smaller spawned in element and did not teleport it despite the amount of time passed since the last successful teleport.

Personally, I would expect the cooldown to only reset after a successful teleport and the spawned in element to be affected.

Just checked it, the cooldown only starts when really a teleport happened. Maybe there were two smaller golems and it just ported one of them? Because it spawns one when clearing the first healthbar and another one for the second healthbar.

[RET STUDIO]

when you have endless mode ??? and after 1.0.6 update rootweave tower not effect with buffer tower is really bad !

[Bonne]

There is no ETA for endless mode yet as it will take a while to integrate and test.
1.0.7 update with a few improvments (containing Rootweave again respecting the Buffer bonus damage) will go live today.

[stretch611]

imho, I am not sure if allowing the unused buffer is a good idea for rootweave, I can easily think of how this can be exploited. I sent you an email with how, but not sure if it made it through your mail server's spam filter.

[Bonne]

Yes, received it.