Played 60hrs - only half way through the Meta Progression

[jim01q]

You need to triple the xp / resources for this. Or better yet get rid of it.

It doesn't even need to be in the game in the 1st place. Doesn't really "suit" this style of game. It's more for action-ey type games where people need a helping hand cos they can't "git gud".

These types of games, if you can't play at the highest level, it's because you are too thick. People accept this. EG I can't beat Slay the Spire at Acension 20 cos I'm too thick.

[Nordil(Hun)]

You get more xp, the more challenging difficulty you select. However if you check the advancement, you gain new cornerstones and new buildings. These actually make the game both harder and both easier.

Also this game is about resource management, decisions and such. What your suggestion is would basicly remove everything that this game defines. On lower difficulties you already have a lot more leeway.

[Mmm]

Nah, if anything, it should be slower. There are enough difficulty options, meta progression fits good here, it change your gameplay as you go, sadly it ends to quickly.

Not sure how you get "more for action-ey type games".

Meta progression done right is fun.

[Yasahi]

Since the jump from Settler to Veteran is negligible and even Veteran to Viceroy is very minor, you should be playing Viceroy or prestige at that point and getting decent progression.

Doing deeds adds a nice boost to the exp gain. Other than that, it's the resources that keep you from unlocking everything the moment you gain a new level and that's fine. Now you need to plan a bit and unlock things that help you the most.

[Gentlest Giant]

There really should be a button that unlocks everything the game has to offer in an instant. Just like there should be in ALL games with this kind of thing going on.

Site with information about how to edit the files to get what you need, or just download a save file:
https://www.darktwinge.com/skip-metaprogression-unlocks/against-the-storm-save-file/
I grinded out the crap the hard way this game, but the information for the games I did this for is correct. Man, this makes my future gaming so much easier.

[kory]

Originally posted by Toxic Giant:

There really should be a button that unlocks everything the game has to offer in an instant. Just like there should be in ALL games with this kind of thing going on.

While I personally very much enjoyed the meta progression in this game, I totally agree. I have seen very few games that actually had a button that did it, but I was always happy when they did.

[Wintersend]

Part of it is not overloading with information. The game has a lot going on and even with what there is at the start people get overwhelmed. P20 is still hard. According to achievements, only about 6% of people have beaten the game on P10 who actually play (measured by number of people who have the most common achievement), and of those only 1/3 have beaten P20. About 30% of the player base (by same criteria as above) has beaten viceroy and at that point it's pretty safely "players who are at least somewhat dedicated". So about 1/15 people who are dedicated have actually beaten P20, not bad honestly. And that's even with all the buffs this game has.

I'm confused what the point being made with "action-ey type games where people need a helping hand cos they can't "git gud"" even is and why it wouldn't hold just as well here. I feel like this is something like "its ok Dark Souls has levels because some people can't win without them" but I'm uncertain.

For an additional point of reference. 6.2% of ALL STS players have beaten Ascension 20. 14.4% have beaten A10, and 72% (the next lowest) have even unlocked it. A little over 90% have the most common achievement compared to 60% for Against The Storm. Which if we assume that people who have won even a single run are equivalent levels of invested in STS as someone who's completed Viceroy is Against The Storm, means 1/12 invested players have beaten the highest difficulty, a higher percentage.

Granted it has been out longer, but that also means more time for randoms who pick it up because big popular game and just drop it quick which would lower the % who have beaten A20. All told, it really seems disingenuous to talk about Against The Storm P20 being too easy because of meta upgrades when STS has higher rates of A20 completion no matter which metric you use.

[kory]

Originally posted by Wintersend:

Granted it has been out longer, but that also means more time for randoms who pick it up because big popular game and just drop it quick which would lower the % who have beaten A20. All told, it really seems disingenuous to talk about Against The Storm P20 being too easy because of meta upgrades when STS has higher rates of A20 completion no matter which metric you use.

As you say, achivement rates are a bit of a funny thing to measure, since it depends on the games popularity and how long people stick tot he game, but to say that this game on P20 compares to STS A20? People playing this game have win rates above 80% on P20, but even the best players on A20 at STS do not break above 50%.

[Wintersend]

Yeah and that gets finicky to even talk about.

Top players having a relatively low winrate after years implies there's a fairly high level of RNG (Its a card game, that's a given) which confuses difficulty with randomness. A game can be extremely random with almost no difficulty or extremely difficult with no randomness. Though if I want to be thorough that gets into decomposition analysis I'm not invested enough nor do I have the data to actually do.

But I choose to assume that the absolute top of games essentially do not make mistakes (they do but a very minor amount) so their winrate can be taken as the theoretical peak winrate over a long time horizon. Given that that % WR is the amount that can be attributed to skill, the rest is essentially luck. E.G. if top players win 50% of games, that means 50% of games were unwinnable and so no matter the skill level of the player it would be a loss so can't be meaningfully factored into difficulty. It's the largely the same technique as is used in data envelopment analysis.

It is both really interesting and really technical and would bore 95% of people to death to talk about in detail. tl;dr, use observed data to figure out what the theoretical optimum for certain combinations of inputs is as we can't do better than that.

That's why I was looking at how many people have completed it at least once and controlled for various levels of investment based on other achievements. In theory if someone is capable of and willing to try they will be able to get at least a win. I figure people who are going to get to P/A 10 are at least likely to try to get to P/A 20 so by comparing those percentages we get the most direct assessment of the difficulty of the top end.

[jim01q]

Well thanks to Toxic Giant above, I just made a lot more Meta Progression just by altering the files. I gave myself and spent 1000 of the 1st currency to unlock everything up to Field Kitchen. That comes way too late imo.

So I should be able to bump up the difficulty and I will see if I can handle the pace of the meta progression from here on in. If it is too slow I will just cheat another couple of 1000 in.

Still I think the dev needs to triple xp/ rewards. If I hadn't cheated I can forsee myself quitting the game in probably another 20 or 30 hours and if everything hadn't been unlocked by then, it would have given me the hump.

Some games just unlock stuff way too slow and some people don't like it. This is one of them.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by jim01q:

Well thanks to Toxic Giant above, I just made a lot more Meta Progression just by altering the files. I gave myself and spent 1000 of the 1st currency to unlock everything up to Field Kitchen. That comes way too late imo.

So I should be able to bump up the difficulty and I will see if I can handle the pace of the meta progression from here on in. If it is too slow I will just cheat another couple of 1000 in.

Still I think the dev needs to triple xp/ rewards. If I hadn't cheated I can forsee myself quitting the game in probably another 20 or 30 hours and if everything hadn't been unlocked by then, it would have given me the hump.

Some games just unlock stuff way too slow and some people don't like it. This is one of them.

Funny thing is not everything is worth unlocking. For instance i left all the cornerstones unlocked in the deeds.(There are some buildings and stuff that can be unlocked there! Like Big shelter, even when i already beaten P20 i learned about the unlocks there from the forum!)
I am currently still on P12 but only cuz i want to unlock gold seal. And i need 7 fragments per city to do it. However why i did not unlock cornerstones from deeds? They are simply not worth it. All of them are garbage, and even if very rarely they could be useful, i could avoid those situations with all them other cornerstones. Not to mention the more cornerstones you have the more the chances are you wont get what you want. Even with rerolls. (I just had a blueprint reroll and i got 3 times Kiln....:D Wasted like 100 amber and i won the game without actually selecting something.)

[el Darkness]

Actually progression in this game is quite fast. I have not spent much time playing and I have majority of Citadel upgrades unlocked. But I guess some people get easily bored with having to unlock stuff, in part I understand that, I also got bored with a few games with slow progression. Slow will be different here for everybody.

[Ariakan]

let me hug you op

[AlexGK]

Are we even playing the same game?

[Antiga]

Yes, let's get rid of the meta progression, the core mechanic that drives the flow and pace of the entire game. Also, no suggestions as to how to improve it, just a "I dun like it" statement while apparently not realizing this is the one thing that sets this game apart in the genre and is responsible for the popularity of the game.

If you're really that opposed to the meta progression, play literally every other game in the genre instead. A thread like this is almost offensive to those that are sick and tired of almost every game being the same.

[Gentlest Giant]

Originally posted by Antiga:

Yes, let's get rid of the meta progression, the core mechanic that drives the flow and pace of the entire game.

Wut. Was I supposed to stop playing the game 200 hours-or-something ago?
Nah.

Thankfully the game has other merits besides being a projected extension of myself where I derive a single dose of joy every time my digital avatar gets a number higher between each game.


Turns out that joy derived from my own improvement is more lasting. Huh.