[Feedback] Floor count & Chaos curses

[Omicron-0B]

So, having just done a run where I miscounted what floor I was on and walked into the Scylla fight with a Chaos curse that essentially stopped me using my attack at all due to the particular circumstances, the following feedback items occur:

1) That little counter in the top left needs to also include a mention of what floor the boss is on, so you can do mental maths accordingly and see e.g. that you don't have enough encounters to clear the chaos curse before the boss fight

2) maybe Chaos just... shouldn't offer curses that would last until the next boss fight even if you skip as many encounters as possible

3) It truly was not clear to me that when it said "lose HP when you use an Omega move" this included triggering an effect that did an Omega move without me doing the full windup (such as the Revaal hammer that makes it do Omega attacks when you reload) until I found out the hard way (Which more than anything else killed the entire run).

[Neferneith]

I disagree.
3) Is the bread and butter of die and retry. You play, you experiment, you find out, you are more aware in the next run. In sone cases, the tooltips could be better but in the end, it's the whole game experience to mix things and see what comes out.
2) On the same vein, Chaos is a risk you take now for the promise of a great reward later. It's my choice on a choice game. Taking a Chaos boon after the middle of the act is a brave choice.
What I could agree on is that Chaos gate should have greater chance to spawn early in the act rather than late.
1) Same principle, you guesstimate the number of encounters before next guardian. It comes with the experience of the game. Only amendment I would do to that is a needed clear rule to the counting of rooms. In Hades, it was clear that every room with a fight was a room. Fountains, NPC and transition rooms didn't count.
In the Mourning Fields and on the Ghost Ship, it's less obvious, each reward seems to count as a room but mana regen and Hex counter seems to consider the whole as one room.

[Omicron-0B]

Steam took its sweet time telling me that I got this notification.

3) Is the bread and butter of die and retry. You play, you experiment, you find out, you are more aware in the next run. In sone cases, the tooltips could be better but in the end, it's the whole game experience to mix things and see what comes out.

3) ...no, the situation I described was the UI not being clear. It's really quite separate to feedback on Chaos boons in general.

2) On the same vein, Chaos is a risk you take now for the promise of a great reward later. It's my choice on a choice game. Taking a Chaos boon after the middle of the act is a brave choice.

2) I've since mellowed on Chaos boons that either possibly or inevitably last until the boss fight. Was writing from the immediate low of having my run ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ destroyed by a UI issue not telling me the consequences of my choices in the usual level of detail at the time I was making them.

However.

you guesstimate the number of encounters before next guardian. It comes with the experience of the game.

1) Bollocks to that. Most roguelikes tell you explicitly how many combat levels are between you and the final challenge, whether it's Binding of Isaac or Slay the Spire or Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. The ones that don't, do not then make it poteintially game changing to miscount what floor you've reached. Saying you should have to guesstimate what floor you're on is akin to saying you should have to guesstimate your hit point total.

As for Mourning Fields and Rift of Thessaly, both are quite clear that you are doing multiple encounters in one location. Where I'd be more concerned is that Mourning Fields includes an endlessly respawning bunch of extra enemies who are not an encounter and who cannot be cleared to prevent them disrupting the actual encounters.

[Neferneith]

Samey, steam notif is lagging.

1) I'm a fervent BoI player. You know the number of floor but not the curse occurence (like blind, mostly depriving you of item choice or XL, swalowing one shop and one HD/DD proc). You rarely know the number of rooms left until boss to charge your active item (unless you got a map). It's rather similar to Hades II, you know you have Woods, Oceanus, Fields, Erebus but not exactly the number of encounters.
I agree that it could be better. I don't really understand the Field of Mourning encounter count. Imho, it's a new idea quite nice but clumsy.
I also agree that Erebus is iritating. Sometimes there is 3 rewards (or triple rewards) sometimes only one.

But...... I still feel that's the way Hades II is played. Note that Hades I was the same. You don't have vision of what's next your next room. Maybe some cauldron ritual could aleviate this burden. But maybe the Devs plan for this is spot on.

[Tim]

1) I love the idea of revealing the floor a boss is on. Might even make a fun HUD element, maybe appearing when you check your Boons, showing the path your run's taken so far by the room rewards & room type.

2) I wouldn't want that to be changed. That's a big part of their appeal. seeing how far you're willing to suffer for big effects, or settle for low-impact effects. There are already so many incentives for picking non-combat rooms that it's interesting to offer an incentive for them.

3) Hades 2 has tons of wording problems. In this case, "when you use" has at least two meanings: when the action occurs at all, or when you, Melinoe, perform it personally (via input, and not via special effects). Quite frustrating. I recognize it's a tall order, but I hope it's a priority for 1.0 to have consistent gameplay-relevant text.

[Neo NiGHTS ®]

I think that actually knowing how many rooms you have left would make the game too easy.
But it's safe to assume that each world has about 7-10 rooms. So you keep track yourself.

The "curveball" that the game can throw (and I hope that doesn't change!) is that sometimes you think "well, I'm sure there are at least 4 more rooms until the boss, so I'm safe to take this Chaos boon" and then you get a free room, which doesn't count as an "encounter" therefore you go to the boss carrying one last "encounter" for the curse to ward off.
But that's the "risk versus reward" part of any metroidvania.

Regarding "encounters" and "rooms", Hades 2 works exactly the same as Hades 1.
There was that difference on the original game as well.

Each Mourning Fields prize counts as a room (don't know whether it's intended or not), which makes that part the easiest for Chaos boons.
The ship, however, I've never paid enough attention to see if each battle count as an encounter.


Last but not least: I've been very vocal about how badly this game needs better wording.
I'm too lazy to make a full list, though :p
(but 200+ runs in my belt and some things still cause me confusion. Even if I learn via trial and error, sometimes I forget hahahaha 😅🤣)