Feedback for Team17: I do not enjoy the randomness of the spell card system

[Locane]

Hey Team17! I have fond memories of playing Worms on the Radioshack display computer when I worked there as a teenager. Ah, windows 95 days.

I started playing Knight Witch, and it seems pretty great overall - I especially like that the bullets to avoid are a color that is easier to tell from the rest of the background stuff, making it a more fair bullet shooter instead of just *chaos*.

I have kind of stopped playing it though, because the spell card system being random just does not work well with a twitch-fast-reaction bullet shooter game type.

I know you're aware of how much immediate cognitive demand you're putting on players in the moment, because you have the auto-fire / auto-hit system for slightly less damage, so it's odd to me that you would then choose to implement a random spell system where the player's <1>, <2>, or <3> input changes and is unreliable in its behavior.

The spells are powerful, and cool - but not knowing what's going to be under my <1> key while I'm actively trying to avoid getting hit, and constantly having to look down at the bottom right of the screen to see what's come up, has lead me to a lot of frustrating moments.

Consider instead the following system as an example of something that can provide reliability but still preserve the spirit of randomness:

• A spell deck is made up of Spells and Effects.
  
• Spell and Effect cards are collected as the game progresses and as rewards for the player.
  
• "Effect cards" are highly varied - things like double damage for next shot, armor for 30 seconds, cast next spell at higher level, etc. You could even consider doing a "trade" effect; IE all damage instantly kills you but all your damage instantly kills non-boss enemies for 10 seconds or, perhaps even synergies of effect cards that help each other, or rewards for having fewer than 3 spell cards in the deck. Just some random ideas.
  
• A spell deck may contain a maximum of 3 Spell cards - the rest must be Effect cards.
  
• The spells in the deck are assigned to keys in the order they are in the deck and do not change until the player edits their spell deck again.
  
• Effects are chosen randomly from the deck each time the player casts a spell.

To reiterate, I'm not asking you to implement the system above. I'm just providing an example of what could be a good compromise between giving the player reliable input and still preserving some of the randomness that the system seems set out to do.

I'm glad games like this are being made and coming out these days - it's great to see the variety and representation in what used to be an extremely patriarchal kind of culture. Games should be for everyone, and it's refreshing to see that happening out there. :)

[Cyiel]

And i enjoy it and i wouldn't want your changes. You have cards to cycle your deck (+1 mana, draw one card and its cost is 0, burn multiple cards, etc) quickly, get these cards and your problem will be solved.

[Minneyar]

Originally posted by Locane:

constantly having to look down at the bottom right of the screen to see what's come up, has lead me to a lot of frustrating moments.

This frustrated me very early in the game, but it stopped bothering me much after I had enough cards that I could actually design a deck to reduce RNG. The question of not knowing what's under your <1> has less of a cognitive load if you already know what's under <2> and <3> from the last time you used them and have planned which one of those you're going to use next.

I do think a useful UI improvement would be to have (optional) small card icons under your character so that you can see what cards you have available without needing to look down and to the right.

For an example reference, my current deck is:
2x Ghost Gun
2x Hand Cannon
2x Mana Surge
2x War Spirit
1x Reload

Obviously this is an endgame deck due to the Ghost Guns, but you can do basically the same thing with other gun types. General strategy is: Use a gun card if one isn't active, use War Spirit if that's not active, and immediately use Mana Surge and Reload as soon as they come up (maybe wait a couple seconds on Reload if you just used a gun). It requires basically no thought; you could probably just mash buttons and be fine, although it's better if you can take the time to check what's next after you've used a card so that you can plan which one you want next.

[msElboim]

One Step From Eden solved it by putting small spell icons above your character's head. That way you don't need to look to the bottom right constantly.

[Wonder]

I disagree, I like having to cycle through spells. I especially love the fact that it gives value to low-mana spells and duplicates. Also, if each button was set to a single spells, it would encourage not changing them as it would break the habits.

I love this system, please do not change it. Many mainstream games dumb things down like you suggest, but that’s not what I except from an indie game. :)

EDIT: Playing some more, I see that you could just build full knight with a deck of weapon modifiers, so you don’t have to think about spells.

[Mumrah]

I agree with the OP. I even made this sort of suggestion before in my own feedback thread. Create 3 spell categories for each button to have some consistency in which spells you will want to use in a situation while within each category the cards will change.
This randomness will be slightly improved if the player wasn't forced to look to the bottom right every time they use a spell, is by putting the spells as mini cards around the character with a mana count above the character's head.
The game is essentially asking the player to dodge bullet hell, be in position to deal damage, and take their eyes off the action to know what spell is up. This is poor design.
Burning cards and mana just to find the card you're looking for, is poor design. It's mindless and contradictory to what the game is asking the player to do.

Again, I don't care for the randomness and the reason the dev gave to not improve the system.

I feel they did not do enough research on how good bullet hell games work. They just wanted to slap a bunch of features together and claim, "This is how we want it to be.", "Don't like it? Use cheats."

/eyeroll

[Minneyar]

Originally posted by Mumrah:

Burning cards and mana just to find the card you're looking for, is poor design.

Not only is that not poor design, that's a fundamental part of game design in deckbuilding games.

People who are new to deckbuilding card games often make the mistake of just filling their decks with anything that looks cool or something that they might need "just in case." This is actually the worst thing you can do; you will often end up with a hand of cards that aren't useful in your current situation, and you'll have to spend a lot of time thinking about how to use them. I suspect a lot of people who play this game because they're a fan of shmups or Metroidvanias fall into this trap because they don't know anything about deckbuilding strategy.

The RNG nature of the deck is your enemy, and you want to minimize that RNG as much as possible. That means you want the purpose of your deck to be as tightly focused as possible; you want to do want thing and do it well enough that you don't need to do anything else. Ideally, you should include as many duplicates as you can, and you also want cards that are either cheap or free so that you can quickly burn through your deck to get to the best cards. Mana Surge, for example, is possibly the most versatile card in the game, because you can always just immediately play it to get +1 mana and go to the next card in your deck. Ideally, you should just be able to mash buttons and not even care which card comes next because they all serve the same purpose.

I'm rather partial to weapon cards, but you could apply the same principle to other card types as well. In fact, I suspect a deck focused around attack cards might be even easier, since if you're spamming explosions and swords, it doesn't even matter which direction you're aiming, they'll just hit anything near you anyway.

[Mumrah]

Originally posted by Minneyar:

Originally posted by Mumrah:

Burning cards and mana just to find the card you're looking for, is poor design.

Not only is that not poor design, that's a fundamental part of game design in deckbuilding games.

People who are new to deckbuilding card games often make the mistake of just filling their decks with anything that looks cool or something that they might need "just in case." This is actually the worst thing you can do; you will often end up with a hand of cards that aren't useful in your current situation, and you'll have to spend a lot of time thinking about how to use them. I suspect a lot of people who play this game because they're a fan of shmups or Metroidvanias fall into this trap because they don't know anything about deckbuilding strategy.

The RNG nature of the deck is your enemy, and you want to minimize that RNG as much as possible. That means you want the purpose of your deck to be as tightly focused as possible; you want to do want thing and do it well enough that you don't need to do anything else. Ideally, you should include as many duplicates as you can, and you also want cards that are either cheap or free so that you can quickly burn through your deck to get to the best cards. Mana Surge, for example, is possibly the most versatile card in the game, because you can always just immediately play it to get +1 mana and go to the next card in your deck. Ideally, you should just be able to mash buttons and not even care which card comes next because they all serve the same purpose.

I'm rather partial to weapon cards, but you could apply the same principle to other card types as well. In fact, I suspect a deck focused around attack cards might be even easier, since if you're spamming explosions and swords, it doesn't even matter which direction you're aiming, they'll just hit anything near you anyway.

Well this is a good summary of how card games work when you're calmly sitting at a table, as one would do when playing a game like chess.

Now imagine playing your card game dodging bullets and explosions. Each card will be in a different pocket. You could play them blindly, or risk taking your eyes off the enemy to check.... Every. Single. Time. This idea basically defies the argument the dev gave for the cards being RNG to "adapt". This is not strategy. It's spray and pray.

[Wonder]

Originally posted by Mumrah:

Now imagine playing your card game dodging bullets and explosions.

Yeah, that’s what this game did! Amazing! :D No need to imagine it, this game exists.

If you don’t like it, I’m sure there are dozens of games that you will prefer.

The funniest thing about all these complaints is that the gameplay is far less precise than traditionnal shooter, PLUS you don’t die in a single hit. Play touhou games, Gradius games, R-Type games, it’s more precise and you die in one hit.

You also have some management to do live in Gradius as you level up your stuff as you play, and a mistake can mess up your build by replacing your high-level weapon by an unleveled one, or by making you move way too fast.

[Mumrah]

Originally posted by Wonder:

Originally posted by Mumrah:

Now imagine playing your card game dodging bullets and explosions.

Yeah, that’s what this game did! Amazing! :D No need to imagine it, this game exists.

If you don’t like it, I’m sure there are dozens of games that you will prefer.

Wow, so you played a TCG while bullets are flying at you and explosions were happening in real life? Who won the game?
The whole, "don't like it, don't play it", argument is weak and doesn't work when many other players are making an issue about the same thing. It just means, you're the outlier from the common issue. This is also just an excuse for players and devs to not improve their games.

I made suggestions that will improve the game and not completely change it, so that more people will want to play the game.
The most common thing I find myself asking for is custom control settings within the game.

Originally posted by Wonder:

The funniest thing about all these complaints is that the gameplay is far less precise than traditionnal shooter, PLUS you don’t die in a single hit. Play touhou games, Gradius games, R-Type games, it’s more precise and you die in one hit.

You also have some management to do live in Gradius as you level up your stuff as you play, and a mistake can mess up your build by replacing your high-level weapon by an unleveled one, or by making you move way too fast.

The issue is that there are systems in place that don't mesh together or are poorly implemented. The systems need to be seamless and easy to use so that players can quickly employ their skills.

The card system is akin to playing Mario with a 6 button controller and each time you jump, the jump action is changed to a different button on the controller. If you want to know which button became the Jump button, take your eyes off the action to check....

All the other games you have mentioned are simple in how it is played. Shoot and dodge. Your eyes never leave the action to check what weapon is in use. If there is a moment, you are not at risk in taking a hit. You never have to micro manage a feature.
You are never put in a position where you're dodging a curtain to look at the bottom right of the screen. Even in bullet hell games, the players sprite has an indicator of where they will take a hit, regardless of sprite shape or size.

[Wonder]

The card system is akin to playing Mario with a 6 button controller and each time you jump, the jump action is changed to a different button on the controller. If you want to know which button became the Jump button, take your eyes off the action to check....

Very bad example. This is more like the stored item in Super Mario World. Also you don’t need to stop looking at the action, you can see the spells from the corner of the eye. I think you just need some practice.

[Mumrah]

Originally posted by Wonder:

The card system is akin to playing Mario with a 6 button controller and each time you jump, the jump action is changed to a different button on the controller. If you want to know which button became the Jump button, take your eyes off the action to check....

Very bad example. This is more like the stored item in Super Mario World. Also you don’t need to stop looking at the action, you can see the spells from the corner of the eye. I think you just need some practice.

Thank you for this reply. Now, I don't have to ever reply to you ever again.

[beezany]

Keeping track of your spell cards is partly a deckbuilding skill and partly a concentration skill. I found that both improved with practice. I think it might help if there were spell icons closer to the center of the screen, although I'm not sure whether I'd find them more helpful or distracting. The pace of the game is such that there's enough time to glance at your cards as necessary if you've done a decent job of planning and dodging. You don't need to know what's in all three slots at all time, and you might have a better time if you don't devote too much concentration to stressing out about that.