[QUERY] Why is the Completion Rate So Low (29.5%)? : Beneath Oresa

[<™[-=> Cookiez <=-]™>]

Only 29.5% of all accounts have managed to complete the game at Architect's Curse 1. Why is it so low?

[Heresy]

I actually won my first run now, playing with Jokan (Big red golem/cyborg type) instead of the starter character (Sora). His ability to generate viruses with each attack made it so very much straight forward,I even completed the 3rd floor boss without taking any damage.

With the starting character I have trouble even getting to like 4 or 5 virus count, which obviously is a problem.

My lessons:
- You need to have defensive cards. As @Gamil pointed out, taking 25 % damage each round (or even fight!) is not feasible.
- You really need to think a bit of how some cards synergize. It's not just "play X to strenghten Y". Sometimes it's much more nuanced. For instance the attack-card that returns to the hand(or deck or whatever - Balefull Insight?) from the discard each round is VERY good when you have a lot of cards in the deck (like viruses).
- Jokan was (to me) MUCH easier than Sora. But of course, this could be due to random factors in my total 4 runs.

[Tiny]

As a new player, i'm not sure how much rebalancing this game needs.
I've played I think five matches and managed to win the last two of them.

I could see how losing your first few games would be quite demoralizing to new players.
The majority of my "growing pains" were also caused by a very sparse tutorial, and some really quite obtuse tooltips on the cards.
It was a very unsatisfying way to start off the game.
This could quite easily make people drop the game before leaning how to play. Which I have chosen to assume is why so few people have won a match.

I personally stuck to Sora for all my games rather than trying to learn multiple characters.
And I must say, I am loving the virus mechanic.
Once you work out how your chosen character works, and which cards are good for your playstyle, the challenges the game throws at you are actually quite fair.
But its getting to that point which is the issue.

I feel like the whole point in this kind of game is to challenge the player, so any noticeable lowering of the difficulty might just sap some of the fun out of the game.
Which would be a shame, as its quite a fun game.

Rather than changing the difficulty, I think its more important to make information more easily accessible to the player.
A certain amount of discovery is fine. But if I can't tell what a card actually does before I play it, then the description on the card needs fixing.

[FLP_74]

I think a big problem is that balance of player 's defence/guard cards value VS enemy attack is very unfair to the player.
It's is usual to confront a group of 2 or 3 enemies each dealing from 5 to 30 and over damage, while having in hand just a couple of cards with each barely 7-10 defence.

[iassassing]

FLP_74 lähetti viestin:

I think a big problem is that balance of player 's defence/guard cards value VS enemy attack is very unfair to the player.
It's is usual to confront a group of 2 or 3 enemies each dealing from 5 to 30 and over damage, while having in hand just a couple of cards with each barely 7-10 defence.

But going the other way, you get +3 attack while enemies get +300 HP, so what could be fairer?

[<™[-=> Cookiez <=-]™>]

Bartosaure lähetti viestin:

We're working on making the game easier. Next patchnote will be also a step in this direction. It's a delicate topic thus, rebalancing something can unbalance something else.

There is an interesting suggestion.

You see, we have a Companion.

However, the Companion never seems to enter combat.

Do you think you could add the Companion into combat?

It would make the game much easier.

[Heresy]

So, I played with Issandre now, and won my first playthorugh with her as well (So, won 0/5 wth Sora, 1/1 with Jokas, 1/1 with Issandre). Could it be that Sora just is difficult, and unfortunately the first availabe hero?

Or perhaps I am missing something integral in how to play her?

[iassassing]

Heresy lähetti viestin:

So, I played with Issandre now, and won my first playthorugh with her as well (So, won 0/5 wth Sora, 1/1 with Jokas, 1/1 with Issandre). Could it be that Sora just is difficult, and unfortunately the first availabe hero?

Or perhaps I am missing something integral in how to play her?

Having won multiple runs with different combinations, I'd say the starting pairing is one of the weakest overall and the virus mechanic is not easy to get working, even once you know what you're doing. I think Jokan would make a much better starter, since at least he gets more powerful with every blow. Him or Nereide, since she seems to be the tankiest and being able to counter-attack means less frustration from not being able to block so much of the time.

[Huckster]

There's been quite a few good points already but I think one of the biggest issues is the fact that whoever you select as your character you have no idea what cards you will be getting during the play through. This affects your deck viability that you unfortunately don't get to REALLY find out until the final floor until one of the bellheads claps your cheeks because your deck is a jumbled bloated mess because you ended up not getting a couple key cards you needed on the previous levels.

On average for time that would be around 20-30 minutes if I can remember of playing right? For someone who just got that game that bait could last a couple rounds before someone gets tired of it. Especially if there's nothing gained from failing run after run.

I think one way to remediate this is to allow players to build a deck before they stat off on a run. That way players will have a better idea of the possibilities of what cards work with others and the characters specific abilities. You can limit the deckbuilding to attack and defense cards and keep some of the stronger utility cards for map exploration.

Card upgrade should have a look at as well. Because I feel like 75% of the time the upgrades are absolutely worthless because again card upgrades are at random so you could be able to upgrade one of your faction or character specific cards which can be very beneficial or your stuck with upgrading your basic attack or defense cards which don't give enough oomf when it NEEDS to matter.

I'd love to come back and actually beat the game but 36 hours and not even completing an exploration once has left me pretty vexed.

[<™[-=> Cookiez <=-]™>]

Huckster lähetti viestin:

I'd love to come back and actually beat the game but 36 hours and not even completing an exploration once has left me pretty vexed.

You've not completed Floor 3 ever?

[Big Mad Wolf]

It feels like bosses scale damage harder then you could even scale your defense. Boss hits you for 35+ damage every turn with no way to avoid it and defense card only give about 10 shield each. But you also can't go full defense, because you need to kill the new spawns to keep the damage per round up. And after managing to kill the Act 2 boss regular act 3 mobs just beat me to pulp with insane damage.

Even worse is the boss that leaches 5 power from you every turn if you are close by, if you have no ability to get into distance. Not a very pleasant first experience for sure. Sohoma would be probably be a better first hero compared to Sora.

[Big Mad Wolf]

The counter mechanic felt quite satisfying also so far felt like the only mechanic that is not just a gimmick and that can have any heavy impact. Though both doing 90+ range at the end of act 3 was still heavy, barely made it through the fight.

[radasusa]

I do agree nereide should probably of been 1st run hero. I personally enjoyed playing sora and she not the weakest character in my pov but i do say that virus mechanic is the most complex/confusing, out of 3 to do correctly in a way that would lead to a win. So i can see why new people would have trouble, i also agree with 5th point from crayon flux that there very little choice in what you will do/ face, you are going to face exact x amount of fight, exact amount of heal/upgrade etc having more split routes could make it more fun while making it easier or harder/riskier. by fighting more elite but more elite reward or go path that lead to more heals/upgrades etc

[radasusa]

Now personally i don't find the game hard and have had little to no trouble on beating the game on multiple people. Though i could say it is unforgiving in the sense that you can get punish pretty harshly from mistakes and those mistakes can stack up into an unwinable run. now everyone play games differently with different strats/choices so it makes sense that some people have more trouble then others.

[<™[-=> Cookiez <=-]™>]

radasusa lähetti viestin:

I do agree nereide should probably of been 1st run hero. I personally enjoyed playing sora and she not the weakest character in my pov but i do say that virus mechanic is the most complex/confusing, out of 3 to do correctly in a way that would lead to a win. So i can see why new people would have trouble, i also agree with 5th point from crayon flux that there very little choice in what you will do/ face, you are going to face exact x amount of fight, exact amount of heal/upgrade etc having more split routes could make it more fun while making it easier or harder/riskier. by fighting more elite but more elite reward or go path that lead to more heals/upgrades etc

I 2nd that. Sora is the wrong hero to start with.

New players just start with a harder difficulty for no reason.

The Virus mechanic can lead to frustrating hands with 5 Viruses in hand.

[Game Familiar]

Agica was the first faction available during EA and people then found counter and the related charge mechanic too difficult, the reasoning behimd switching to Sora was to give a hero that is straight forward, which is sort of true if you are familiar with the game, a couple of changes made related to TO faction prior to release narrow the room for mistakes playing her by too much, that was unfortunate