Please ME Devs read: Improvement suggestions / Issues / Questions

[STRYKE]

I am writing to you, Metric Empire Devs, because I really enjoy playing Battle Shapers. Since the game is still in Early Access I thought that you would maybe like to get some feedback from a committed and passionate player. Thank you for making the game so great already. On the following lines you will find my improvement suggestions / wishes, identified problems and some questions on the game. It would be so nice if you would consider putting some of my suggestions into the game. Keep up the great work!

Improvement Suggestions / Wishes

Gear Level Transfer or decrease weapon / ability pools

I like to use the same two weapons for the whole run. The problem is, that if one has decoded all weapons the chance of getting a specific weapon you like is small. Maybe the game is not meant to be played like that. Maybe it should be played with different weapons every run. But I don’t get why the gear level transfer feature was removed. If I have found a great weapon and want to keep it then I now have to live with the level of the weapon. If you only find “crap” weapons you don’t want to change your active weapon with that. You can’t do anything with these “crap” weapons, only recycle them, even if you actually really need a higher gear level. So I think the gear level transfer should come back. Another option would be to be able to deactivate unwanted weapons / abilities from the decoded pool.

Mix and match Mods / Mod Inventory?

It would be super nice if you could open up the mod menu any time you want to switch up mods. In this menu there could be some kind of mod inventory pool, where you can put mods in that you don’t need at the moment, but want to keep for later use.

Restart Room Button

Some few times the game wouldn’t recognize that I had eliminated all enemies of a room. So the doors remained locked and I wasn’t able to progress. I’m very sure that all the enemies were eliminated. But maybe some of them got glitched out of the map or something and therefore weren’t eliminated and that’s why I was locked up. Such things can happen in games. I don’t know if this can be fixed. But, anyway, my point is that this absolutely mustn’t happen in game where you lose everything when you quit in the middle of a run. Because quitting is the only thing you can do when locked up. So one thing would be to try to fix these bugs, but just to make sure no player ever gets locked up it would be great if one had an option to restart the room after some minutes. Like, via the menu or maybe a true button in the room.

Choose Shaper Hack / Show Inventory

Every time you choose a shaper hack or upgrade, you are locked in this screen until you make your decision. But it would be really great if you could still hit TAB for the inventory menu to see what weapons / abilities you already got to make an informed decision on what would be a good fit to the build.

Indicators for optional ways

I always do the optional rooms. But it would be really nice if there was an indicator to see if an exit was for an optional room.

Oculi less spongy

The Oculi are just bullet sponges right now. I find it really frustrating. They have way too much health. I think it would be alright if their health bar would be halved. Also the first room of VerOS tower is just tedious with those 14 or so oculi.

Hidden rooms useless after cipher decoded

I love these hidden rooms / areas where you normally find ciphers. But if you have found all the ciphers these rooms / areas become totally useless. I think it would be great if you would then find at least some credits / turinium in them. Now there’s mostly nothing.

New Game Plus or so? Endgame?

I beat the game a few times now. But actually I don’t know why I still play the game. I mean it is still entertaining, but there is no progression anymore. What are your plans for this, let’s call it endgame? I don’t have any really good ideas on this. But one could scale up difficulty after each successful run, and also the weapons and abilities? But what would people keep playing? Cosmetics? New Towers? More stories / levels in towers? Special weapons? I think people will need something to beat and a motivation / reward for that.

More Towers?

Will there be more towers after release? Maybe with some kind of DLC?

Co-op?

I know the game is not layed out for Co-op. And I also know that making Co-op great is hard. Also it would require a fitting infrastructure with servers, etc. So I understand that this won’t be a future feature due to complexity. But it would be so damn great!

Problems

Super Ultrawide

On super ultrawide resolutions (like mine 5760x1080 (48:9 / 16:3)) the game is nearly unplayable at the moment. Actually everything works perfect, but the ingame HUD, the overlays of the weapons, the damage numbers and dialogues are getting scaled up to huge dimensions. I found a fix for that on the widescreen gaming forum discord.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1421290/discussions/0/4515505663136774331/

But it would be nice if this would get fixed by the developers.

HUD UI

As stated above the HUD UI is problematic in ultrawide. But even with this fix it is just too big. What would be really great was if one could disable the HUD outlines and its subtle background. Like one can already lower the transparency of the whole HUD, but it would be nice if one could also only do it for these said parts.

Stuttering / Performance

So I have a pretty beefy gaming rig. I can for instance play Doom Eternal on the highest settings in 5760x1080 (nearly 4K) with a locked 60 FPS easily. My system features a GeForce 3080Ti, Intel i9 12Gen and 32 GB of RAM. Also I run my games from a fast SSD and have the latest drivers installed. So just judging from visual fidelity I would say that Battle Shapers is not as visually complex as Doom Eternal or other more demanding games. Battle Shapers looks really great in its art style / theme. But it does not justify that my GPU is getting really warm. Like 70°C plus on medium settings. And also the game is dropping FPS always when entering and leaving a fight since version 0.8. Sometimes FPS drops below 30. This happens also on other occasions throughout the game. I can’t tell why. A game with the visual fidelity of Battle Shapers should run buttery smooth on my system but for an unknown reason it doesn’t. So I guess the game still needs more optimization. Also it would help to integrate upscalers and frame generation. I’m using a separate app for that right now.

Questions

• If you put multiple mods of the same kind in a weapon, do they stack? Like 75% more damage against burning enemies, and then another one with 50%?
  
• What to do with Turinium when all ciphers are decoded?
  
• Where are Savegame files stored?
  
• Will there be some kind of encyclopedia in the game which explains all the damage types / statuses / buffs?
  
• The game has a very small player base right now. Do you know why? How can that be improved? Can I do anything?

[Metric Empire Meemo]

Processing..

(It's the weekend, but we'll get back to you ASAP.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.)

[Metric Empire Meemo]

Originally posted by EVIL NEON:

I am writing to you, Metric Empire Devs, because I really enjoy playing Battle Shapers. Since the game is still in Early Access I thought that you would maybe like to get some feedback from a committed and passionate player. Thank you for making the game so great already. On the following lines you will find my improvement suggestions / wishes, identified problems and some questions on the game. It would be so nice if you would consider putting some of my suggestions into the game. Keep up the great work!

Hey EVIL NEON, this is awesome. We really appreciate the sentiment behind this gesture. You will be excited to learn some of your suggestions align with upcoming features!

Let's dive into it.

Improvement Suggestions / Wishes

Gear Level Transfer or decrease weapon / ability pools

I like to use the same two weapons for the whole run. The problem is, that if one has decoded all weapons the chance of getting a specific weapon you like is small. Maybe the game is not meant to be played like that. Maybe it should be played with different weapons every run. But I don’t get why the gear level transfer feature was removed. If I have found a great weapon and want to keep it then I now have to live with the level of the weapon. If you only find “crap” weapons you don’t want to change your active weapon with that. You can’t do anything with these “crap” weapons, only recycle them, even if you actually really need a higher gear level. So I think the gear level transfer should come back. Another option would be to be able to deactivate unwanted weapons / abilities from the decoded pool.

The Gear Level increase on Power Transfer was removed with the Mod Extractor update because we reduced the impact of gear level scaling in run power. We are actively reworking gear level scaling for weapons & abilities as a whole, which includes a new feature allowing players to upgrade the gear level of your weapons and abilities.

Mix and match Mods / Mod Inventory?

It would be super nice if you could open up the mod menu any time you want to switch up mods. In this menu there could be some kind of mod inventory pool, where you can put mods in that you don’t need at the moment, but want to keep for later use.

This is a fun suggestion and something I will relay to the team.

Restart Room Button

Some few times the game wouldn’t recognize that I had eliminated all enemies of a room. So the doors remained locked and I wasn’t able to progress. I’m very sure that all the enemies were eliminated. But maybe some of them got glitched out of the map or something and therefore weren’t eliminated and that’s why I was locked up. Such things can happen in games. I don’t know if this can be fixed. But, anyway, my point is that this absolutely mustn’t happen in game where you lose everything when you quit in the middle of a run. Because quitting is the only thing you can do when locked up. So one thing would be to try to fix these bugs, but just to make sure no player ever gets locked up it would be great if one had an option to restart the room after some minutes. Like, via the menu or maybe a true button in the room.

Thank you for letting us know and we are sorry for the inconvenience. We are aware of this issue and are determined to address the root cause. The button is a good suggestion and something we will consider as an alternative solution!

Choose Shaper Hack / Show Inventory

Every time you choose a shaper hack or upgrade, you are locked in this screen until you make your decision. But it would be really great if you could still hit TAB for the inventory menu to see what weapons / abilities you already got to make an informed decision on what would be a good fit to the build.

Great suggestion and something I will relay to the team alongside the Mod Inventory idea above.

Indicators for optional ways

I always do the optional rooms. But it would be really nice if there was an indicator to see if an exit was for an optional room.

We are working on implementing an optional room indicator! This feature will be arriving soon.

Oculi less spongy

The Oculi are just bullet sponges right now. I find it really frustrating. They have way too much health. I think it would be alright if their health bar would be halved. Also the first room of VerOS tower is just tedious with those 14 or so oculi.

We are currently addressing how various build effects interact with certain targets in the game, including the Oculi. This should address the sponginess of the Oculi, but if not, we will rebalance the health directly.

Hidden rooms useless after cipher decoded

I love these hidden rooms / areas where you normally find ciphers. But if you have found all the ciphers these rooms / areas become totally useless. I think it would be great if you would then find at least some credits / turinium in them. Now there’s mostly nothing.

We are discussing internally what to do with these rooms & turinium; we are exploring a few options and ideas at the moment.

New Game Plus or so? Endgame?

I beat the game a few times now. But actually I don’t know why I still play the game. I mean it is still entertaining, but there is no progression anymore. What are your plans for this, let’s call it endgame? I don’t have any really good ideas on this. But one could scale up difficulty after each successful run, and also the weapons and abilities? But what would people keep playing? Cosmetics? New Towers? More stories / levels in towers? Special weapons? I think people will need something to beat and a motivation / reward for that.

This is great feedback. Without giving too much away, we can share that we have a few things planned to specifically address game difficulty and replayability. They will be arriving in the coming months.

More Towers?

Will there be more towers after release? Maybe with some kind of DLC?

Co-op?

I know the game is not layed out for Co-op. And I also know that making Co-op great is hard. Also it would require a fitting infrastructure with servers, etc. So I understand that this won’t be a future feature due to complexity. But it would be so damn great!

We can neither confirm nor deny plans for additional towers! As for Co-Op, we agree that it would be incredible. It is a matter of resources as it would be such a substantial effort for us right now.

Problems

Super Ultrawide

On super ultrawide resolutions (like mine 5760x1080 (48:9 / 16:3)) the game is nearly unplayable at the moment. Actually everything works perfect, but the ingame HUD, the overlays of the weapons, the damage numbers and dialogues are getting scaled up to huge dimensions. I found a fix for that on the widescreen gaming forum discord.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1421290/discussions/0/4515505663136774331/

But it would be nice if this would get fixed by the developers.

HUD UI

As stated above the HUD UI is problematic in ultrawide. But even with this fix it is just too big. What would be really great was if one could disable the HUD outlines and its subtle background. Like one can already lower the transparency of the whole HUD, but it would be nice if one could also only do it for these said parts.

We are aware of the issues surrounding the super ultrawide & their HUD UIs and we are working on a fix. Once an optimized solution is ready, we will share it with the community. Thank you for your patience as we get this sorted out.

Stuttering / Performance

So I have a pretty beefy gaming rig. I can for instance play Doom Eternal on the highest settings in 5760x1080 (nearly 4K) with a locked 60 FPS easily. My system features a GeForce 3080Ti, Intel i9 12Gen and 32 GB of RAM. Also I run my games from a fast SSD and have the latest drivers installed. So just judging from visual fidelity I would say that Battle Shapers is not as visually complex as Doom Eternal or other more demanding games. Battle Shapers looks really great in its art style / theme. But it does not justify that my GPU is getting really warm. Like 70°C plus on medium settings. And also the game is dropping FPS always when entering and leaving a fight since version 0.8. Sometimes FPS drops below 30. This happens also on other occasions throughout the game. I can’t tell why. A game with the visual fidelity of Battle Shapers should run buttery smooth on my system but for an unknown reason it doesn’t. So I guess the game still needs more optimization. Also it would help to integrate upscalers and frame generation. I’m using a separate app for that right now.

We acknowledge this is an issue and deeply appreciate your patience. Please know that we are continuously working on optimizing the game and improving the overall performance across patches & updates.

Questions

If you put multiple mods of the same kind in a weapon, do they stack? Like 75% more damage against burning enemies, and then another one with 50%?

Buffs stack are additive. So in your example, the damage against burning enemies would add up as follows: 75% + 50% = 125%.

What to do with Turinium when all ciphers are decoded?

We are exploring different things to do with Turinium! We'll share the news once we have a plan in place.

Where are Savegame files stored?

To Get Your Save File

1. In the Windows File Explorer, go to `C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\<USER ID>\`
   
2. The location can be different if you installed Steam on a custom path.
   
3. The save files are stored in the Steam program folder and not in your game folder.
   
4. In this folder, you will find the folder named `1421290`. In the right-click menu, go `Send to -> Compressed (zipped) folder...` to create a .zip of your save file.

Will there be some kind of encyclopedia in the game which explains all the damage types / statuses / buffs?

This is a great suggestion - I'll relay it to our team.

The game has a very small player base right now. Do you know why? How can that be improved? Can I do anything?

This is a great question, thank you for asking.

We suspect the size of the current player base is due to various factors, including that Battle Shapers is a single-player game belonging to a fairly niche genre. We are working to gain visibility both within and beyond the roguelite/roguelike genres, through a combination of paid and organic avenues.

Your support means a lot and we are really appreciate your offer to help. We have seen your presence across our community spaces (Steam Discussions, Discord) and your contributions have not gone unnoticed.

What makes a big difference is when our players ask their favorite gaming content creators (Streamers, YouTube) to try the game, either across their comment sections or on socials. We also encourage our players to participate in our upcoming playtests and to continue participating in our community spaces - your feedback helps us make the game better, while active discussions helps us build our community and maintain the game's momentum. There is also a Battle Shapers Discord [discord.com] where newcomers often share content and ask questions, and where your participation (even if it is only occasionally) would mean a lot to other players.

Thank you again for your suggestions, feedback, and questions.

Please do not hesitate to reach out if you need anything else!

Best,
Forrest at Metric Empire

edit: formatting & phrasing

[STRYKE]

Thank you Forrest for this super nice response. I'm very curious about the upcoming changes to the game. If there is anything new to test I will jump back into the game right away. I would really like to see this game to become a great success and will continue my support for it. Also I'm just thinking about posting a video about it myself on youtube. Maybe on the weekend. Anyway, thanks again for reaching out to me. This shows to me that you really care about players unlike many other dev studios.