Seals, Magma & Steel - No Fun :: Increlution General Discussions

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FlybyKnight has Increlution

Jan 22, 2023 @ 11:12pm

Seals, Magma & Steel - No Fun

I got to be honest - I do not like this mechanic. In a game where the goal is to get better at jobs, having items that punish you for getting faster feels bad. I am at a point where I have given up on unlocking the last magma construction, as I am too fast, and will never be able to eat that fast.

At least let the shield apply to these, then I can live under the illusion that if I work hard enough and reincarnate enough times, I will not get punished for progression.

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Originally posted by Gniller:

Thank you for voicing your concerns about this particular mechanic!

I figured I'd give the balance a few days before jumping into the discussion when it was still mostly about first impressions. While first impression feedback does hold value on its own, I didn't want to bias the impressions that followed by sharing too much too soon, so giving it some time felt appropriate there.

At this point a fair amount of you have figured out that the game now does offer a way to reduce the damage of these jobs (and yes, that'll most likely be the next NG+ perk as well). And while that should tackle a significant element of this concern for future content, it might prove to be "too little too late", if this many people are frustrated by it for three chapters.

Their design intention may not be entirely obvious, so I'll start with that. If you haven't gotten to chapter 10 yet, I'd advise you to stop reading if you don't want to see any spoilers!

In their core, they are designed to trade food or health for resources that aren't necessarily required to progress, but certainly make for valuable side-objectives. Seals being the most valuable food of chapters 6-8, magma being a bonus for carrying additional food through the volcano jump, and steel being 47% obtainable through the side-exploration (I think this is missed by a fair amount of people, and will probably see an additional textual tooltip-hint). To some degree the market food-trade mechanic overlaps with that design, in a non-time-pressure fashion.

From a balancing perspective, changing their damage to either decay or a downscaling damage per completion would significantly shift the balance in a way where they'd either become trivial very quickly, or would need to be re-tuned to a degree where they'd become far more annoying early on.

That said, I do have some ideas to tackle the core-frustration. I don't think their design is that poor overall, and it creates a supporting factor for path deviation throughout progression. But it's specifically the feeling of "becoming better backfires" that stands out throughout feedback. It's not so much their total damage, but the decreasing time to work around that.

I haven't fully settled on the next steps here, but if this many players voice concerns about something this specific, that justifies reconsidering its approach. I have some ideas that could work here, but won't settle on anything until after I've properly tested some of them. Examples of viable alternatives could be:

- Reduce the food cooldown of all food-types by ~20% of max food cooldown per damage-job completion, causing it to ravage through food faster (similar to explorations that deal damage on completion, but less extreme)
- Shift damage into a banked damage system, creating a flat increase in decay for a stacking duration that persists after leaving said job behind (until all damage is applied).

Between those options, I like the first one best on a conceptual level. It also partially overlaps with explorations that deal damage on completion, helping consistency. Of course, any change would require re-tuning of other numbers too. If it's softer on speed-up mechanics, it'll most likely require base-damage to be a bit higher to compensate (especially when active food-sources are available, which wouldn't apply to magma).

In any case, I went a little TLDR; and I'll need proper testing before I can really say whether either of these, or another alternative, actually works "better" in practice. But ultimately it's feedback like this where Early Access really helps me fine-tune the game to tackle specific frustrations! - Even if the exact answer might not always be straight-forward, and will require some time, information is always where improvement starts!

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Showing 1-15 of 61 comments

FlybyKnight has Increlution

Jan 22, 2023 @ 11:29pm

Just wish to add, I have no NG+ perks. I am sure they are great but I like the idea of working hard, but not the idea of being punished for it.

Blackwolfe has Increlution

Jan 22, 2023 @ 11:42pm

I agree that it just feels bad punishing you for getting faster when it comes to those.

ZombZ

Jan 23, 2023 @ 12:14am

100% agree. Specifically came to the forums to vent about this. Additionally these mechanics create an obnoxious amount of micro management, when to me, the automation is the biggest fun factor. ATM I'm playing through the new content and basically have none of my cooking or exploration tasks set to automated...
The steel one is extra cruel for teasing us with there "having to be a better way to do this".

To be a bit more constructive with my whining: I suggest that at a certain skill cap these types of tasks remove the damage penalty. That would feel better than just brute forcing everything with max health.

ingverd

Jan 23, 2023 @ 1:22am

+1. Absolutely hate tasks when you get more damage when you faster do it and you can not stop progression and every time it's become more and more harmful.
If seals you can just skip (little bit less food - ok no problem) but another tasks should be completed! I don't want skip x2 hp gain (shrine) or HP decay/2 bonuses (steel hut)

ComboBreaker has Increlution

Jan 23, 2023 @ 1:40am

Originally posted by ZombZ:
To be a bit more constructive with my whining: I suggest that at a certain skill cap these types of tasks remove the damage penalty. That would feel better than just brute forcing everything with max health.

That is actually a really good idea. I would love that. I think it would be even better if the damage decrease with the level. For example, if you are supposed to arrive with a skill around level initial_lvl, and the cap is cap_level, make every level decrease the dmg by Initial_dmg / (cap_lvl - initial_lvl).

FlybyKnight has Increlution

Jan 23, 2023 @ 3:04am

Originally posted by ZombZ:
To be a bit more constructive with my whining: I suggest that at a certain skill cap these types of tasks remove the damage penalty. That would feel better than just brute forcing everything with max health.

I like this idea as well, better than my funnel shield idea. When you can complete the task in under a second, damage falls away. Or damage diminishes on a sliding scale as you improve.

Last edited by FlybyKnight; Jan 23, 2023 @ 3:07am

Blackwolfe has Increlution

Jan 23, 2023 @ 3:29am

Yeah, you'd think as you become more skilled at something you would find ways of doing it more efficiently (as in, not taking as much damage)

Meneldal

Jan 23, 2023 @ 4:19am

Removing the damage entirely would make it way too trivial. You could limit the damage to one instance per second so that you don't lose as much health but it still hurts a fair bit.

It does seem that there will be ways to reduce that later on (with dna too), so the dev is aware of that.

ZombZ

Jan 23, 2023 @ 6:06am

Isn't trivialising earlier stages of the game the main reward for progressing? I at least get a neat little dopamine hit from finishing the first couple of chapters in less than 10 seconds.

Everything gets trivial "eventually" anyway. If you have 10m health you can club all the seals you want without any noticeable setbacks. The issue with these types of tasks is that the difficulty curve is all over the place. Which FEELS (I'm not pretending this is a fact) opposed to the main draw of this type of game, which is a steady sense of progression.... "numbers going up" and stuff

Tegga21

Jan 23, 2023 @ 7:07am

Originally posted by FlybyKnight:
I got to be honest - I do not like this mechanic. In a game where the goal is to get better at jobs, having items that punish you for getting faster feels bad. I am at a point where I have given up on unlocking the last magma construction, as I am too fast, and will never be able to eat that fast.

At least let the shield apply to these, then I can live under the illusion that if I work hard enough and reincarnate enough times, I will not get punished for progression.

Probably coming in new relics I'm guessing

#10

FlybyKnight has Increlution

Jan 23, 2023 @ 1:54pm

Originally posted by ZombZ:
Isn't trivialising earlier stages of the game the main reward for progressing? I at least get a neat little dopamine hit from finishing the first couple of chapters in less than 10 seconds.

Everything gets trivial "eventually" anyway. If you have 10m health you can club all the seals you want without any noticeable setbacks. The issue with these types of tasks is that the difficulty curve is all over the place. Which FEELS (I'm not pretending this is a fact) opposed to the main draw of this type of game, which is a steady sense of progression.... "numbers going up" and stuff

Yes I agree. It "feels" wrong. I can smite a dragon in 1 second flat, but 400 incarnations later i have still not progressed against seals. In fact they became more dangerous.

#11

Jan 23, 2023 @ 5:33pm

I completely agree. You naturally get faster -- you damage yourself faster -- it gets harder and harder to mitigate the self-damage -- you get even worse than before and can't progress as far and die even earlier than before.
That makes absolutely no sense in this kind of game.

I just barely got into the new content, torturing myself through the seals part, and now I can't even progress, everything either kills you in a few seconds due to self-damage or requires you to have some huge multipliers that are unattainable even in hundreds of generations.
Do I have to do hundreds and thousands of generations just to grind those multipliers? But the more multipliers I get, the faster I'll die because of the aforementioned dilemma.
Previous chapters also had similar kinds of difficulty spikes, but they pale in comparison.

I honestly used to think that Increlution was the best game in its genre. I LOVED this game, I played almost 800 hours of it basically since day one.
There was some info that the dev was going to look at the seals mechanics and change it, if I remember correctly or am I wrong? I was really looking forward to that.

But not only did that mechanic not change, now even more of this crappy self-damage mechanic was introduced (right at the very beginning of the new chapter!), and it's much harsher. People hated that mechanic -- why add an even worse version of it right after you're done with it at the end of the previous chapter?

Now I don't even want to play it after the new update, even I got tired of doing hundreds of generations and dying at the same exact point in the game, not only without any progress, but getting even weaker.

Last edited by N; Jan 23, 2023 @ 5:35pm

#12

Simbu

Jan 23, 2023 @ 8:43pm

I am rather curious what is causing people to think seals are so nasty. It might be my NG+ perks, but honestly I have experienced 0 problems with seals.... I mean they can't directly kill you, and by the time you reach chapter 10 you should have the stats to complete the social and agility task without taking damage... and the walrus is easily solved by setting it and mudbank the same priority as seals (I generally set both to max, falcons to high) along with run empty food once in game settings, so you get the hp recovery from seals but not the drain effect until after walrus is dead.

Sure, you won't leave with a full inventory of seals every time, but you will probably take 40-50 with you, and regardless of what your stats become you can never die from it... might get less seals, but so what?

It usually takes me only 2 generations from completing the hut in the quarry to getting past seals, mostly because I switch to 7-8-6 chapters right after completing the hut, instead of 6-7-8... which admittedly might be NG+ abilities letting me do that a bit early, but you get so much hunting exp that beating chapter 7 after reaching seals for the first time should be really close, and without perks it takes a couple generations, but you will get past poachers as well then your home free (I admit that to do chapter 9 I usually do river route and 7-6-9, simply because its faster with my food value, but 7-8-6-9 works just as well with mine route).

On top of all of that, its less effective to do chapter 8 when going into chapter 10 anyway, since it just increases your health decay with no other benefits, until your strong enough to fight the poachers... so seals are entirely optional anyway.

Last edited by Simbu; Jan 23, 2023 @ 8:45pm

#13

FlybyKnight has Increlution

Jan 23, 2023 @ 9:10pm

Originally posted by Simbu:
I am rather curious what is causing people to think seals are so nasty.

I agree it is manageable - does not change the fact that it feels unrewarding in a game that is about chasing reward through repetition.

#14

Simbu

Jan 23, 2023 @ 9:24pm

To each their own I guess, though from a replay perspective, chapter 6-8 offer some of the best mechanics in the games with lots of little things you can optimize for some huge gains... where as all the other chapters are pretty well defined and are just going thru the motions.

After I complete this playthrough (just hit chapter 6, trying a complete new run thru the game to see how it feels to replay thru chapter 11, especially without prepping a save), I will probably try to play thru without any perks. Won't be the same experience, since I unlock all automations in just 1 attempt with how many DNA points I have, but will be nice to see how much perks are effecting my perception... but unfortunately probably 2 weeks off from finishing that run.

#15

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Increlution > General Discussions > Topic Details

Date Posted: Jan 22, 2023 @ 11:12pm

Posts: 61