Glorified demo?

[Nukleus]

So I really want to like the game but for 15 bucks all I got is a glorified demo.... Beside the 2nd sector there's nothing new or things to unlock. Still no crew leveling, no new perks to unlock. I know the game is "early access" but damn there is a lot of work

[anarcher]

Check back after xmas/new years. Typically the january cold weeks is when most devs for games like this get a lot done.

[BeastofBones]

Originally posted by Nukleus:

Beside the 2nd sector there's nothing new or things to unlock.

That seems like an odd sentiment. 2nd sector has different enemies, new boss, and events that are specific to 2nd sector, etc. By that argument, you could say that Slay the Spire 2nd/3rd acts add nothing to the game, because you could technically find all the regular cards / relics in Act 1.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Originally posted by Nukleus:

So I really want to like the game but for 15 bucks all I got is a glorified demo.... Beside the 2nd sector there's nothing new or things to unlock. Still no crew leveling, no new perks to unlock. I know the game is "early access" but damn there is a lot of work

Bingo, the only reason to buy it is to support the devs. They have barely touched the game in a year.
This feels bad because the starting options are limited and builds are also limited by various factors

[RIV]

We've kept the demo up to date with everything we added in terms of quality of life and features because we wanted players to have an accurate idea of what the game will be like.

The main difference at this point between the demo and the early access build is the second sector, complete with ~40 new enemies and an end boss, some extra events, and the Lancer and the Firebrand player ships.
In the coming weeks and months we are going focus on adding more content, meta-progression, achievements, and so on.

We've spent the last 6 months since our next fest demo adding the meta-progression system, the escalation system, a whole second sector complete with enemies and events, but what has occupied most of our time was making sure the game is stable, and we've found hundreds of edge cases in card or event interactions that could result in a soft lock.

Now that we're on stable footing (relatively speaking), our main focus will be content and listening to the player feedback for balancing and on how to improve the game.

[Drages]

Hooded Horse has many indie games in development and is mostly pushed to EA earlier than it should have.

It's good to support indies, but making them publish their game earlier will certainly create stress on them. As a result, we get tons of potentially good games but at least 1-2 years of development are needed even for EA.

I trust those developers and I think we will have something great in 2-3 years after those EA launches but I don't support this kind of early EA launches because I believe it damages the reputation of the game and as I said it adds unnecessary stress on developers as players will start to demand more content, fast.

Minorlords is the best example for this as that game needs a clear 5 years of development more as it's just one developer.

I think not every indie game should go for EA too but Hooded Horse uses this for every game.

[Old Crow]

@RIV here's some feedback for you. Let people enter hangars at stations as many times as they want, or enable installing AI from hangars.

Here's an example. I enter act 2 with loads of cash and AI bot. When you enter a station, you are allowed to enter the hangar, then leave the hangar and still be in the menu to do other activities. This gives the player a false sense of security as you can only do that once right now. At first i thought you install the bot in the hangar, which would make sense. So i enter the hangar only to see i can't install AI, but there are some nice weapons i want to buy. So i leave the hangar, install AI, then i get back in hangar to calculate my purchases. In the end i decide that it would be better to sell the AI so i have enough cash for the gear i want, so i leave the hangar again in order to uninstall the AI, only to be left on the map with no way to return to the shop. So now i have tons of cash and could have bought the perfect gear for act 2 but am left dry because of a stupid design choice. This made me ragequit and refund the game to be honest.

[VisionofFire]

Originally posted by Old Crow:

This made me ragequit and refund the game to be honest.

Ouch haha. Well hopefully, once the immediate feelings subside, you might give the game another chance. Early access is early access though, and I'll bet that at some point during development there will be other bugs that kill or corrupt your current run. So it might be best to wait for the full release in your case.

The limit on hangar entries is actually likely due to an old bug that's actually been fixed now. Way back in the day, entering/re-entering the hangar from the menu would actually reroll the equipment available in the shop. This was, as you can imagine, incredibly busted, and the limit on hangar entry served as a soft limit on being able to reroll the shop at the time. I believe the devs have said on Discord that ideally, the station options and Hangar screen should be integrated into one screen. But I think they've been prioritizing working more on content deliveries before EA launch.

Also a bit of a fun tidbit. The AI bot as a reward from the boss is actually a relatively new thing, as far as Breachway goes. Previously, you had to find an Escape Pod to acquire a pilot to crew any additional piece of equipment, and that wasn't always possible on any given run. The AI bot was introduced to help mitigate that RNG, and the option to sell it was given so that it didn't feel useless if you already had enough crew.

[RIV]

Originally posted by Old Crow:

@RIV here's some feedback for you. Let people enter hangars at stations as many times as they want, or enable installing AI from hangars.

Here's an example. I enter act 2 with loads of cash and AI bot. When you enter a station, you are allowed to enter the hangar, then leave the hangar and still be in the menu to do other activities. This gives the player a false sense of security as you can only do that once right now. At first i thought you install the bot in the hangar, which would make sense. So i enter the hangar only to see i can't install AI, but there are some nice weapons i want to buy. So i leave the hangar, install AI, then i get back in hangar to calculate my purchases. In the end i decide that it would be better to sell the AI so i have enough cash for the gear i want, so i leave the hangar again in order to uninstall the AI, only to be left on the map with no way to return to the shop. So now i have tons of cash and could have bought the perfect gear for act 2 but am left dry because of a stupid design choice. This made me ragequit and refund the game to be honest.

Hi, thanks for taking the time to write this post.
Revisiting shops is high on our priority list, we've had the feature in the past that resulted in some unwanted effects.
A new implementation of it is already in the testing phase actually, so it should come out soon, we just didn't have time to properly test it before launch, but it should be available sometime this week in one of our hotfixes.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Originally posted by RIV:

Originally posted by Old Crow:

@RIV here's some feedback for you. Let people enter hangars at stations as many times as they want, or enable installing AI from hangars.

Here's an example. I enter act 2 with loads of cash and AI bot. When you enter a station, you are allowed to enter the hangar, then leave the hangar and still be in the menu to do other activities. This gives the player a false sense of security as you can only do that once right now. At first i thought you install the bot in the hangar, which would make sense. So i enter the hangar only to see i can't install AI, but there are some nice weapons i want to buy. So i leave the hangar, install AI, then i get back in hangar to calculate my purchases. In the end i decide that it would be better to sell the AI so i have enough cash for the gear i want, so i leave the hangar again in order to uninstall the AI, only to be left on the map with no way to return to the shop. So now i have tons of cash and could have bought the perfect gear for act 2 but am left dry because of a stupid design choice. This made me ragequit and refund the game to be honest.

Hi, thanks for taking the time to write this post.
Revisiting shops is high on our priority list, we've had the feature in the past that resulted in some unwanted effects.
A new implementation of it is already in the testing phase actually, so it should come out soon, we just didn't have time to properly test it before launch, but it should be available sometime this week in one of our hotfixes.

Could you also make it clear what chosing an option does
I arrived at a station and i had an option to fight or to use ace pilot to evade ship.
I chose the fight since i wanted more stuff but disabled the station(shop,bar and other stuff i needed).
Faction reputation also needs work because i though high reputation is good but it seems to be an empty tile with a "move along message"....

[Nukleus]

Originally posted by BeastofBones:

Originally posted by Nukleus:

Beside the 2nd sector there's nothing new or things to unlock.

That seems like an odd sentiment. 2nd sector has different enemies, new boss, and events that are specific to 2nd sector, etc. By that argument, you could say that Slay the Spire 2nd/3rd acts add nothing to the game, because you could technically find all the regular cards / relics in Act 1.

I never played StS and don't intend to so no comparison here. But I'll say that what makes people keep playing game like these that there is a sense of progression and getting better each runs etc... At the moment I've unlocked all the ships but there's not much making me want to keep playing the game and screw up my sleep schedule with that "just one more run" feeling.

Act 2 is nothing but another boss with just double the HP of act 1 boss and a couple more cards/actions, same with all the encounters in act 2. They're not new, it's just same ships over and over again with more cards/actions than act 1. I go to the "new" event and it's just 3 lines of dialogue and standard fight like any other.... That to me isn't new content.

I get that they aren't 120 devs working full time on this game and that they might have been pushed to release in early access too early for them but right now there clearly not enough in the game to make me want to play it further. So I guess it'll be just another one of those "shelved games that I'll chek every now and then when there's a major update", which I think is a shame because I honestly think this game has potential and I'd love to be proven wrong and that I'll want to keep replaying it over and over