Hades helps the player too much

[Multihog]

I think a huge problem with this game is that it gives you so many extra lives. For example, in Enter the Gungeon, you don't really get any more health. You just unlock more weapons, and that's it. You truly beat the game by learning how to play it; you learn all the enemy and boss patterns to avoid damage. You never get more freebie health that lets you beat the game by means of tanking more damage.

Hades, on the other hand, allows more and more brute force tanking and mistakes by giving the player many extra lives through its long-term progression system. This diminishes the feeling of accomplishment of finally beating the game. The other upgrades are fine, but I feel like giving 4 extra lives is ridiculously generous. It also makes the game boring because losing is not realistic after a while. The heat levels also add very little challenge each, so you end up doing many runs where losing is nowhere near, and it gets boring.

[Askeladd]

Hi,
I don't know how far you go with hadès, but keep in mind that beating Hadès is not the final goal and 4 extra lives is one build among others. It is not too much as it goes with pact of punishment too.
As we have to make a lot of escape, no matter we succeed or not, to reach the true end, it seems way more fun keep things changing.

[Multihog]

Originally posted by Askeladd:

Hi,
I don't know how far you go with hadès, but keep in mind that beating Hadès is not the final goal and 4 extra lives is one build among others. It is not too much as it goes with pact of punishment too.
As we have to make a lot of escape, no matter we succeed or not, to reach the true end, it seems way more fun keep things changing.

4 extra lives may be a "build," but 3 extra lives is not. That is something you get from the mirror for "free."

It's a problem that losing a run is virtually impossible for me anymore, and it's been that way ever since I got my first win. Or perhaps the problem is not so much that I can't lose anymore but that the first win I ever got had more to do with the fact that I kept pumping souls into the mirror, and the extra lives granted by that were the factor that pushed me over the finish line more than my own skill increasing.

I think the difficulty falls off way too hard due to the extra lives and the other upgrades. I know it's probably because they want anyone to be able to beat the game on normal (even though there's God Mode!), but still it feels cheap and not as rewarding as winning through skill.

[Askeladd]

Did you try higher level of pact?
I agree the game is now more fun than challenging after so much escape but the new arenas and moveset for bosses were great. You can even disable your mirror's bonus with the pact.

[Shockwaves]

Although what you're saying is technically true, what you're complaining about is a bit unjustified. I checked your Steam achievements and saw that you didn't unlock the First of Skelly's Prizes achievements which is for beating the Pact of Punishment at level 8 or higher. Playing Hades with no Pact's enabled is like playing a game on easy and then complaining that it's too easy.

Unlike Enter the Gungeon, Hades can be 10000% more punishing depending on how you tune your pacts. Put the pact of punishment on 15 or 20 and I doubt you'll feel the same. Put it on 30+ and you'll forget you ever thought Hades was easy.

[Multihog]

Originally posted by Shockwaves:

Although what you're saying is technically true, what you're complaining about is a bit unjustified. I checked your Steam achievements and saw that you didn't unlock the First of Skelly's Prizes achievements which is for beating the Pact of Punishment at level 8 or higher. Playing Hades with no Pact's enabled is like playing a game on easy and then complaining that it's too easy.

Unlike Enter the Gungeon, Hades can be 10000% more punishing depending on how you tune your pacts. Put the pact of punishment on 15 or 20 and I doubt you'll feel the same. Put it on 30+ and you'll forget you ever thought Hades was easy.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2473371317
I mean, yeah, apparently my highest heat is exactly 8. I change weapons a lot to avoid repetition, 66 total clears. But what difference would it really make if I added some percentage of enemy health or numbers, or removed some insignificant mirror upgrades, considering I usually kill Hades with *all* lives left and tons of health when using the sword?

Yeah, if I made the jump to like heat 30, you're probably right that I would struggle. But it feels dumb to do straight away due to how the reward system works with heat. I would be doing heat 30 repeatedly while still only being rewarded for 1 heat level each time. I would be repeating the *exact* same thing over and over with no more reward. Though I guess it could serve as a good one-off challenge for each weapon, kind of like putting it on hard mode and calling the game finished after beating all of those.

Either way, my main problem is getting the first victory is not skill-based but largely free unlike in most other roguelites. Though I guess it doesn't matter right now that I'm past that, personally. Just feels like dumb design.

[Askeladd]

Simply put the "emergency measure" (? not sure of the english version) to 4 and we'll talk again. It will give new paterns to bosses including hadès.
And same high temperature can be very different depending how you build it.
No doubt there is still lot of challenge for you here.

[Multihog]

Originally posted by Askeladd:

Simply put the "emergency measure" (? not sure of the english version) to 4 and we'll talk again. It will give new paterns to bosses including hadès.
And same high temperature can be very different depending how you build it.
No doubt there is still lot of challenge for you here.

Yeah, I have that at 3. I guess I'll just say f*ck it to the rewards and skip to like heat 20 and see how that goes.

[Fourlamas]

Well yea, 0 heat becomes a cakewalk at some point, I suggest increasing heat ( I mean thats why it exists), Extreme Measures and Forced Overtime can be quite the challenge :). Or more enemies, timer, no mirror, or all of it at once.

[Multihog]

Originally posted by Askeladd:

Did you try higher level of pact?
I agree the game is now more fun than challenging

This is a bit tangential, but I find it very odd that you present challenging and fun as mutually exclusive. I would say they're mutually *inclusive.* One can't exist without the other, at least in the sense that challenge is required for fun.

[DarrkPhoenix]

The progression through mirror upgrades lets players progress as they're learning the game's systems (particularly those of us with slower reflexes who make more mistakes), while the Pact of Punishment then lets players dial the difficulty back up to whatever level they find fun. Overall I think it's a pretty balanced system that helps keep players from getting frustrated as they're trying to get their first few clears, while also allowing more experienced players to really crank up the difficulty to find their sweet spot for a fun challenge.

Since you're finding things a bit easy currently, I'd recommend trying a run with Extreme Measures 4, both levels of Benefits Package, and Middle Management, as these mix up the mechanics the most among the Pact options. If you're still finding things too easy then feel free to add Forced Overtime and Hard Labor on as well. There's also Routine Inspection if you feel that the mirror upgrades are just giving you too much of an advantage.

[Askeladd]

I meen that is a long time the question is no longer "will i beat hades?" but more "how quick will it be?"
And this is fine as the game give a piece of story after each victory.
The game is not unbalanced, too casual etc but simply tell his story this way.

[Multihog]

Originally posted by DarrkPhoenix:

The progression through mirror upgrades lets players progress as they're learning the game's systems (particularly those of us with slower reflexes who make more mistakes), while the Pact of Punishment then lets players dial the difficulty back up to whatever level they find fun. Overall I think it's a pretty balanced system that helps keep players from getting frustrated as they're trying to get their first few clears, while also allowing more experienced players to really crank up the difficulty to find their sweet spot for a fun challenge.

Since you're finding things a bit easy currently, I'd recommend trying a run with Extreme Measures 4, both levels of Benefits Package, and Middle Management, as these mix up the mechanics the most among the Pact options. If you're still finding things too easy then feel free to add Forced Overtime and Hard Labor on as well. There's also Routine Inspection if you feel that the mirror upgrades are just giving you too much of an advantage.

Yeah, I do get that actually. It makes sense if you consider the overarching design and how a lot of the game is gated behind winning: the story is stuck dead on its tracks unless you win, and win frequently.

It's different in a game like Enter the Gungeon, where there is essentially no story. Progressing through the dungeon itself provides the motivation to keep going, and it's the main (effectively sole-) focus, so it's actually in the game's best interest if it takes long for the player to win.

I suppose this was indeed the best approach because making the first victory extremely difficult to get, even after unlocking everything, might've resulted in a large portion of players dropping the game before even seeing it really begin properly story-wise.

[tyrone shoelaces]

nobody put a gun to your head and made you spend darkness on death defiance skills

nobody put a gun to your head and made you select skelly's keepsake.

you are free to use the green shaded darkness trait opposite to death defiance

you are free to use any keepsake

you are bound only by the constraints you set upon yourself

[TommyEV]

the guy plays at 8 heat and claims the games isn't hard

[Multihog]

Originally posted by tyrone shoelaces:

nobody put a gun to your head and made you spend darkness on death defiance skills

nobody put a gun to your head and made you select skelly's keepsake.

you are free to use the green shaded darkness trait opposite to death defiance

you are free to use any keepsake

you are bound only by the constraints you set upon yourself

I never was a fan of this argument. I've seen many versions of it over the years, such as "just don't use armor", "don't use those spells", "play the game hanging upside down from the ceiling blindfolded" and so on.

As a human being, I feel compelled to take the path of least resistance, and there's nothing I can do about that. That's a biological fact (https://neurosciencenews.com/path-of-least-resistance-6139/). Hence, it's unsatisfying and feels stupid to limit myself by deliberately refraining from using some of the tools available to me. It feels like I'm crippling myself on purpose and destroys all satisfaction and feeling of legitimacy. That's why this argument doesn't work.

The challenge itself should be balanced in a manner that allows for the use of all the available tools and still provides a challenge. The tools given should be adjusted in a manner that they're all on par with each other so that no choice is a no-brainer.

That being said, there's heat, but it isn't free of problems. Increasing heat by 1 each time barely makes a difference (beyond the boss upgrade one, which is significant), so you'll have to sort of break the clearly intended system and raise heat significantly, skipping a lot of the rewards, so you have some dissonance there still.

Originally posted by TommyEV:

the guy plays at 8 heat and claims the games isn't hard

Because I played the game as intended and raised heat by 1 each time instead of by 10? The game deliberately tells you to turn down the heat if you've exceeded the gauge, or you'll miss out on rewards. The heat ramps up too slow if used as intended, and skipping heat levels feels stupid due to how it's designed.

Anyway, I already conceded that the system isn't so bad and that there are understandable reasons for it in my previous post. I mainly just wrote this one to point out how silly the "just don't X", self-restriction, "design your game yourself"-argument is.