[FEEDBACK] 10 things I picked up on

[Dan_The_Noob]

I have only played the demo's first level so this is partly a first impressions or things that stuck out really bad.

1. health pickups are not generous enough
- 5 health is not enough for gibbing an enemy if there's minimal health available.
2. ammo is too scarce, melee focus takes over the gameplay. (on the FIRST level)
3. melee doesn't work correctly during a dash
4. enemies on "Recommend experience" difficulty (just engaged?) fire/attack too fast.
5. charged melee attack should be moved to altfire or another key (or ditched?) as it hurts the responsiveness of general melee.
6. the lunge should be shortened or removed on the melee attack.
7. what does armor do? it just seems to be "also health"
8. bunnyhop momentum is lost when turning in the air (???)
9. tutorials repeating on death/restart
10. ladders using jump/crouch to ascend/descend feels clunky and unnecessary.

[Storm]

I found the worst thing is enemies unclear attacks - there's so subtle or no at all animation frames. Like clown-bird ;ike creature who acts like Quake's fiend, but almost without any animation or telegraphing - just almost static sprite with unpredictable lounge and heavy damage. Same goes to projectile enemies - most hits you take looks like goes through or missing, but actually hits very hard without any noticeable sound, visual effect or screen splash. With all this player have false sense of power fantasy that ending up instantly with just HUD off and death animation, comes from nowhere.

[Dan_The_Noob]

i tried the demo on the lowest difficulty after doing the recommended, and the enemies have "tells" but they are like 1 frame of animation.
enemies move extremely slow on very easy though

[Storm]

Yeah, 1 subtle frame and not animated lunge, or blended-in projectile firing. Easy are too easy, everything above more annyoing than difficult due to bad combat feedback. With more enemies, more speed and more tough protagonist it should be fine, but when it comes to 2-3 hits death... Not really.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Originally posted by Thunda Gawd:

I found the worst thing is enemies unclear attacks - there's so subtle or no at all animation frames. Like clown-bird like creature who acts like Quake's fiend, but almost without any animation or telegraphing - just almost static sprite with unpredictable lounge and heavy damage.

Not quite true. That enemy has a special animation and a distinct screech before it lunges at you.

[Storm]

Originally posted by JohnnyTheWolf:

Not quite true. That enemy has a special animation and a distinct screech before it lunges at you.

I didn't said there is not. I said it is very subtle and unclear for such fast paced game and simple sprites artwork. If there's only 1-2 animation frames, they should be much more distinguished, not subtle duck and almost static lunge.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Well, I would not call it "very subtle" (that screeching is rather loud), but I guess a few more animation frames could not hurt.

[Awesreek]

Originally posted by Dan_The_Noob™:

I have only played the demo's first level so this is partly a first impressions or things that stuck out really bad.

1. health pickups are not generous enough
- 5 health is not enough for gibbing an enemy if there's minimal health available.
2. ammo is too scarce, melee focus takes over the gameplay. (on the FIRST level)
3. melee doesn't work correctly during a dash
4. enemies on "Recommend experience" difficulty (just engaged?) fire/attack too fast.
5. charged melee attack should be moved to altfire or another key (or ditched?) as it hurts the responsiveness of general melee.
6. the lunge should be shortened or removed on the melee attack.
7. what does armor do? it just seems to be "also health"
8. bunnyhop momentum is lost when turning in the air (???)
9. tutorials repeating on death/restart
10. ladders using jump/crouch to ascend/descend feels clunky and unnecessary.

1.Whilst it will take some getting used to the degree to which you can over stack your health with heart pickups is ridiculous, 5 is plenty and more for the easy enemy types would break the game.
2. There is a specific balance being strived for with the resources, melee is a bit O.P. due to some tweaks we made recently, but if you're struggling with the resource management in particular I'd recommend picking an easier difficulty and looking for secrets.
3. Please elaborate.
4. Enemies attack windups are consistent across all difficulties, if you're struggling on the 4th pick something easier, Viscerafest is a hard game but once you get a solid grasp of how to play it can be easily conquered.
5. We'll see, feels a bit odd to move it like that and personally I've not had any issues with it's responsiveness nor have I gotten complaints about it but I will keep it in mind.
6. This was a community requested feature and people have loved it's addition so no.
7. Armor reduces all damage taken by 50%
8. It shouldn't be but we can look into that.
9. This is a known issue and has been fixed on our end.
10. I couldn't disagree more, this system allows you to easily grapple to and climb up and down ladders, the level of control it gives you feels much than the standard and I'd take it over the typical awful video game ladders any day.

[Awesreek]

Originally posted by Thunda Gawd:

I found the worst thing is enemies unclear attacks - there's so subtle or no at all animation frames. Like clown-bird ;ike creature who acts like Quake's fiend, but almost without any animation or telegraphing - just almost static sprite with unpredictable lounge and heavy damage. Same goes to projectile enemies - most hits you take looks like goes through or missing, but actually hits very hard without any noticeable sound, visual effect or screen splash. With all this player have false sense of power fantasy that ending up instantly with just HUD off and death animation, comes from nowhere.

I'll disagree on the thunderbird, I feel like his outstretched arms combined with his screech are pretty notable, but the rest, yeah I can kinda see it and I'll look into giving them a more unique telegraph.

[Awesreek]

Also when it comes to the resource management, I've had some people telling me they think it could stand to be tighter, and some who turned off tutorials, didn't know melee was a thing and got through just fine relying only on their guns. The intent is that you have to regularly lean on both. Ultimately the bulk of people have not complained about resource management, and those who have cannot agree if there's to little or to much. When it comes to jumping between difficulties, I balanced the 4th difficulty for myself and scaled down from there. Its not possible to cover every basis of player, and whilst obviously things will continually be tweaked as we go forward, I can confidently tell you, due to my own experience and feedback from others that if you're failing, it's more likely a consequence of failure on your end than the games. I do think the visual telegraphs on projectile enemies could be improved, but it's not something I've seen anyone really struggling with, and for me I find it pretty easy to tell when they're going to start shooting, but I do agree, it could be better.

[Storm]

In my taste weapons can be faster and more accessible with ammo, but weaker. On contrast with slow heavy melee blows. This way player can actually use both at the same time, or decide what is better in current situation without resorting to go melee against a room full of ranged enemies on low health. Now it feels like if I have ammo, I can just clear the room without any melee attacks but next room I'm all out of ammo and I can't actually predict on first run if I have to save it or spray because there will be more.

[Awesreek]

Originally posted by Thunda Gawd:

In my taste weapons can be faster and more accessible with ammo, but weaker. On contrast with slow heavy melee blows. This way player can actually use both at the same time, or decide what is better in current situation without resorting to go melee against a room full of ranged enemies on low health. Now it feels like if I have ammo, I can just clear the room without any melee attacks but next room I'm all out of ammo and I can't actually predict on first run if I have to save it or spray because there will be more.

The intent is that you're regularly leaning on both, constantly swapping between the two as you play in the heat of the moment, never leaning on one for the sake of one fight, and if you're low enough on ammo that you find that an issue than it sounds more likely that it's something you yourself need to overcome. Making the weapons weaker would only lead to people complaining about them, and the melee did used to be slower but people didn't really care for that. With that said I understand the game isn't going to be for everyone, a great deal of people and myself do love the combat and it's flow as it stands so I don't feel the need to make fundamental changes to it.

[Dan_The_Noob]

Originally posted by Awesreek:

I do think the visual telegraphs on projectile enemies could be improved, but it's not something I've seen anyone really struggling with, and for me I find it pretty easy to tell when they're going to start shooting, but I do agree, it could be better.

taking your own experience as feedback doesn't really work, since you make it.

as for the resource management/melee OP reply.
maybe less-but-better ammo, seperate ammo for the machineguns (to help with balance) and a slight bump to the pistols damage would fix this.
I understand you probably used Doom for reference having machineguns use pistol ammo, but the Doom pistol is iconic for how redundant and weak it is. where as here, it seems like the pistol is part of the juggling.

as for the enemy tells, 2-3 frames of delay between gun firing and damage coming out should fix most things without needing an inbetween sprite or anything (at the fast paced 4th difficulty)

[Awesreek]

Originally posted by Dan_The_Noob™:

Originally posted by Awesreek:

I do think the visual telegraphs on projectile enemies could be improved, but it's not something I've seen anyone really struggling with, and for me I find it pretty easy to tell when they're going to start shooting, but I do agree, it could be better.

taking your own experience as feedback doesn't really work, since you make it.

as for the resource management/melee OP reply.
maybe less-but-better ammo, seperate ammo for the machineguns (to help with balance) and a slight bump to the pistols damage would fix this.
I understand you probably used Doom for reference having machineguns use pistol ammo, but the Doom pistol is iconic for how redundant and weak it is. where as here, it seems like the pistol is part of the juggling.

as for the enemy tells, 2-3 frames of delay between gun firing and damage coming out should fix most things without needing an inbetween sprite or anything (at the fast paced 4th difficulty)

Thing is it's not something I've seen anyone complaining about. If anything I've seen people praising the combat for being genuinely challenging and not cheap. But like I said, I do agree, I think ranged enemies could stand to telegraph their attacks a touch more.

As for the pistol it does 25 damage and the shredders do 8. But I may reduce the pistols firing rate and bump it's damage output, it is very useful, but I do think a greater divide in function between the shredders would make it's use more notable.

[Dan_The_Noob]

if they use the same ammo they should do roughly the same damage per shot, or one will almost always trump the other (in a case where ammo is tight)

[Awesreek]

Originally posted by Dan_The_Noob™:

if they use the same ammo they should do roughly the same damage per shot, or one will almost always trump the other (in a case where ammo is tight)

And yet the bulk of players still lean on the shredders. It is worth noting the pistol also uses 2 rounds and not 1. However there are advantages to using one over the other based on contextual situations, either way the balancing is not final and will continue to be tweaked as time goes on.