This game is too hard - And other feedback!

[ryandannar]

I'd been waiting for Hyper Light Breaker for a long time, as I'd really enjoyed Hyper Light Drifter. I realize the game JUST CAME OUT in EARLY ACCESS, but boy does it feel like this game still needs a lot of polishing.

I did NOT have any performance issues. Let me say that right off the bat. The framerate might have been slightly stuttery at times, but there was no real sense of lag, and everything played very smoothly. My issues were with the game's overall design.

1) This game needs to find a better way to teach the player how to play. Starting the game for the first time, you are inundated with a confusing mess of systems which are hastily explained via clumsy "tutorial" graphics. Those kinda tutorials might be necessary in a game this complex -- but then, the game doesn't give you any time to actually learn these systems and practice them before just throwing you into the deep-end and expecting you to survive. More than any other game I've played recently, HLB desperately needs to start the player out with an easier "mini mission," a gamelike tutorial which is designed to teach you the basic combat and collection mechanics one element at a time. Honestly, one of the strengths of "Drifter" was the way it started easy, and led you through an evocative opening-sequence which taught you all the basic movements while also establishing the world. "Breaker" could deeply benefit from that kind of invisible hand-holding in its opening stretches.

2) Combat is too hard, right from the get-go. I mean, one of the things I loved about Drifter was its tough, twitchy combat. And I can see that Heart Machine was going for that here, and I do appreciate that. But there's a difference between well-paced combat which scales up in difficulty as the player proceeds through the game, and what we have here -- which, in my experience, was simply getting inundated by wave after wave of vastly overpowered enemies almost immediately after any new spawn. I wanted to lose myself in the exploration of this lovely open-world, but I couldn't because the enemies just kept coming from all directions.

3) And then, you lose everything you collected every time you die. Once I realized that the only way to keep the stuff you find is to make it to the extraction-point, I became quite disinclined to explore or engage in combat with any enemies. Every time I spawned anew, I just made a beeline to the extraction-point, just to see if I could make it through a single run alive.

4) Extraction is too hard. You know what? I could never extract. Once I started concentrating on just trying to get a successful extraction -- and, you know, foregoing all the supposedly fun stuff -- I found that extracting successfully requires you to fight-off a boss-rush-like wave of enemies, some of which were far harder than any enemies I had yet fought. After dying probably 5 times while trying to extract, I gave up.

5) Picking up loot is supposed to be fun -- but in this game, it was seldom clear to me exactly what I was picking up, or what it might do for me. Certain items were clearly explained, like certain temporary buffs. But the buffs I encountered were seldom useful to me; most of them buffed types of weapons I don't have and have no hope of ever seeing, given how difficult this game is. And I never really understood what the "blood drops" were supposed to be used for, or the "patch-looking items," or the fifteen other kinds of things I'm collecting. I never could do anything with any of it. It just seemed like I was filling-up arbitrary meters, and then losing most of what I'd collected anytime I died. Which was often.

6) You die a lot, and it takes far too long to get started on a new run every time you die. You respawn back in your homebase, and you have to dash across that level to find the teleporter pad, and then you have to select your loadout and hit confirm -- all of which is fiddly and takes a couple of minutes, what with the loading-screens and all. And because you'll be dying over and over again, it starts to feel like a real grind. A game which kills you this often needs to give you a fast choice when you die: (a) restart with previous loadout, (b) change loadout and restart, or (c) back to base. Having to respawn back at your base every time is very tedious.

Because I loved "Drifter," and because I liked "Solar Ash" well enough, I'll come back to this game. I do really like Heart Machine as a developer, and I want to see them succeed at making great games that sell well. But right now, in this early-release version, I won't be recommending "Breaker" to anyone. I hope they get these issues resolved.

[Hartwin]

Excellent points. I think that there's a lot at play from the get go that should only be implemented after successful Prism collection and your first few Crown kills.

In particular it's incredibly frustrating to deal with the ramping frequency of spawning enemies, item degradation, resource loss, and wave based extraction all at once right away.

I think what everyone is feeling is an extremely high learning curve with very little direct instruction on how to successfully navigate the game.



To compare some of these mechanics to a popular staple of the genre, Hades, the difficulty is a slow unlock over time. Yes Hades is punishing, but it's also achievable immediately. You gradually unlock the Heat system which allows you to temper the difficulty to your own liking while garnering higher rewards and challenge.

I think the goal of the Escalating Events and spawns in HLB is to provide a similar feeling. An escalating map that drives the player to extract. However, I believe that currently it is out of balance given players experience with the game and knowledge, which makes it feel punishing without purpose. Similarly having an extraction based game that suddenly locks the player in a cage match when they may already be low on health is just an additional kick in the pants after a grueling slog to survive and progress in the first place. Getting to the extraction point should be the extent of the struggle until the player elects to pump ups the difficulty in exchange for higher tiered rewards. It should be an optional unlockable modifier to have enemies spawning on the extraction and it's current implementation feels like a shallow copy and paste from RoR(2).

[I_come_in_peace]

Originally posted by ryandannar:

...

I agree 100% with everything ryandannar has written.

[SolarLune]

Yeah, good feedback.

About difficulty: The game does feel difficult at a baseline - it is frustrating to die frequently, but I kind of do like it because it is actually challenging and I do feel like I'm actually getting better as a player and learning how to deal with the individual enemy types.

I do feel cool rushing down ranged enemies and then dodging a wolf that's attacking from offscreen because I'm learning the enemies and their movements - it's hard, but it feels learnable. I haven't played for super long, but I do think it's certainly not too easy, haha. I also think the game is (or at least, I'm assuming it is) intentionally balanced around feeling difficult to start with. If that is the intended way the game is supposed to go, then the game could be altered to manage player expectations (so when you die, instead of feeling like "I died and lost some resources", you feel like "The run ended and I got some resources").

Maybe the dev vision is that you die for the first couple of runs, gain some resources from failed runs, have enough to get better weapons and stuff and experiment during the process with the game mechanics. If so, I think it's doing that pretty well - it might just be a matter of making the gameplay slightly more forgiving to help manage that feeling of frustration.

I think the player could be eased into the game a bit more - maybe giving a medkit to start with, and making enemies ramp up harder over time but start out fewer in number and weaker would be good to help bring up the lows. It might also be nice to introduce some invulnerability frames after taking damage so you can't be ground down as quickly from being swarmed or multi-hit.

As for the items you pick up, a lot of them are for purchasing gear, unlocking stores, etc. in the hub, primarily. I don't recall if they really have any text describing what they do in your inventory, so that would be a good thing to add to make it clearer what use they have. That way the player can know their value (and so decide whether or not to extract early).

The blood drops are the main currency for purchasing weapons in the hub (and possibly in the field; there's vendors out there as well). Blood drops are also used to pull weapons or gear from corpses in the field as well (they will be marked with the amount of drops it costs to get whatever they have).

Originally posted by Hartwin:

In particular it's incredibly frustrating to deal with the ramping frequency of spawning enemies, item degradation, resource loss, and wave based extraction all at once right away.

I think what everyone is feeling is an extremely high learning curve with very little direct instruction on how to successfully navigate the game.

Hmm, I could see them modifying it to push those elements behind modifiers - I kind of like the idea, but I feel like item degradation / loss on death is a key part of extraction-style gameplay?

Originally posted by Hartwin:

I think the goal of the Escalating Events and spawns in HLB is to provide a similar feeling. An escalating map that drives the player to extract. However, I believe that currently it is out of balance given players experience with the game and knowledge, which makes it feel punishing without purpose. Similarly having an extraction based game that suddenly locks the player in a cage match when they may already be low on health is just an additional kick in the pants after a grueling slog to survive and progress in the first place. Getting to the extraction point should be the extent of the struggle until the player elects to pump ups the difficulty in exchange for higher tiered rewards. It should be an optional unlockable modifier to have enemies spawning on the extraction and it's current implementation feels like a shallow copy and paste from RoR(2).

I haven't extracted successfully yet, but it does sound like a pain to explore the entire space and then lose a life and at least some resources when you can't survive. I think enemies spawning on extraction should probably always be there, though, as there's not much tenseness if you can just beeline to the extraction point and activate it without issue. Maybe the variety and amount of enemies spawned at the point (and the overall length of time you're fighting there to extract) should grow over time, though?

On that topic, I'm not certain how I feel about run modifiers - the danger gauge already serves some of the purpose of such a modifier system, since the player has control over how hard the game is based on whether they extract or keep going for another danger tick. Maybe more things should rely on the clock? Maybe they should add a modifier system and make the danger clock a modifier?

[Blood Moon Overlord]

I just came here to see if anyone else was struggling like i am lol, I'm normally pretty good at games, but man! This is hard!!! I kinda feel like i could forgive the game being this hard if I was able to retreat and heal with currency at a heal station or something. But I STILL don't know how to get meds and its punishing as hell when your low health and decide its time to leave, Just to remember your not going to survive extraction with your inch of health. I like the game and im hyped for its future, but I cant enjoy this game as it is when its impossible to kill normal ADS let alone any of the 3 boss's and then the final world king!!

[Vyr]

This game is WAY punishing, there is no need to be sodomized like this when you just have respawn.
Too much enemies, elite enemies and invasions, boss hunters and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ going on in mere minutes after spawning. I feel like my game time is not respected, I am continiously wasting time getting items I lost the second I die, and well, the roguelike progression is nearly inexistent.

And let me tell you about the time you lose since you die, get a DEAD screen (~5 secs), you see all your equipment, and item by item you see how they are erased (~15 secs) and of course the screen where you see how many lives you have left (~10 secs); roughly 30 secs wasted.

[🅹ohn 🆁ainbow]

Thanks! No reason to buy.

[TERMINATOR-SSD]

good feedback, im seeing more and more posts about it being too hard. Sadly thats going to be a no buy for me in that case. I don't need more stress in my life ha

[Jake yeeew]

It feels like it’s made for 3 players and doesn’t scale down for solo play. It’s weird. It’s super fun with teammates but punishing solo.

I also think they should implement more healing items / options, healing is too sparse, too hard to even unlock and too minimal when you do find it - 5hp from a plant that’s pretty rare… are you kidding me!

[I_come_in_peace]

Originally posted by Jake yeeew:

It feels like it’s made for 3 players and doesn’t scale down for solo play. It’s weird. It’s super fun with teammates but punishing solo.

I also think they should implement more healing items / options, healing is too sparse, too hard to even unlock and too minimal when you do find it - 5hp from a plant that’s pretty rare… are you kidding me!

I only played solo and don't intend to play co-op. So I'd really appreciate if the devs scaled the difficulty properly for solo play. Since it's announced as singleplayer and co-op one can expect it to be tuned (and fun) for both.

Also, while it's nice to try to communicate only by icons and images I find everything to be very opaque - it worked for Drifter, but so far not here. Being forceded to read tutorials from the menu to understand the game mechanics is the very opposite of having visual communication only.

[m33o44]

Not going to read that essay
I'm just here to be the first to say:

Skill issue

/s

I do have to agree to the book you've written
This game is too hard for me too and it doesn't feel polished at all
I also have never extracted so far but I'm only 2 hours in game so I think this is normal?

[Useless]

Agreed. I feel like the combat should be easier if the Dodge was better like it was in hyper light drifter but other than that yeah I agree with everything you said dying a lot is not fun that's not what makes this game enjoyable at all

[Poop Chute Lawsuit]

I struggle like crazy to even get started powering up because as soon as I have a usable weapon is disappears on death due to no way to heal. If I could have at least 1 med kit off the bat, OR when I run to a shrine fully heal when using it it MIGHT feel better but idk for sure because the only thing I feel is holding me back from getting anywhere is the lack of healing sources. I mean I didn't know the flowers healed until I picked one up when I was hurt and I didn't know parrying healed until I happened to parry when damaged.

Another thing I really think they should have is like a default melee I need a default ranged weapon. I'll be swarmed by enemies and I wanna pick off the flying ones to focus on the heavies but as soon as I die I lose it and getting to one sometimes feels near impossible especially if theyre near a prism holder

[cheesus]

Honestly, totally agree with your post. I didn't have too much trouble actually extracting after I figured out the pattern to the enemies and grabbed a good gun, but it does really feel like the game encourages you to run away from fights in order to preserve yourself, which isn't fun at all.

It also takes a while to traverse the world with how big it is, so it felt like an absolute slog to get through exploring or looting even with the whole run away as quickly as possible tactic..

[KnuckleHead]

Agreed with most everything you said. It is really difficult and I think, worse, the time it takes between runs is waaaaay too long which compounds the first issue.

[Puru]

The boss fights with constantly spawning adds are atrocious too. Let me fight the damn thing, not the tiny wolves with no hint at them actually attacking you.