One thing making the game toooo easy. Please change it back.

[James Ryan]

Hello everybody,

Ive played the part before this game and remeber how hard it was from mission to mission. Especially against wolves.
Now Ive downloaded one mod campaign for this game and I ve challenge like all mission very fast and asked myself: Wtf why is that so easy?

Ive notices that 90% of my kills are made with the jump + foot-kick attack, which ai yet is like never countering. Some of them are running away when the player is jumping so you no more can hit them, but all in all, this can be figured out and calculated very easily.

I remeber that in the game before this one, the ai was able to HOLD player while he was in air and throw him down so it wasnt so easy to spamm jump+kick (most damaging attack btw), all the time. It indeed was a real risk.

The game and fighting system is lovely, but I cannot prevent myself to spamm this all time. @Devs: Can you please avoid this and make ai able to COUNTER this imbalanced attack with some new functions???

From my perspective, its destroying the game. I see myself finishing the campaign (if its released) in one day when thinking about how its now.

[kavika]

Originally posted by James Ryan:

but I cannot prevent myself to spamm this all time. @Devs: Can you please avoid this and make ai able to COUNTER this imbalanced attack with some new functions??

We could send you a jar, which you put a dollar in each time you do a jump kick, and when you're done you have to give it to a charity of your choosing :)

Right now we're focused on making the game easier for new players of all skill levels, and finishing the new Overgrowth story so that we can leave early access. The game has been relatively difficult for a long time, and we needed to work on how to make it easier for new players.

We might spend time later on increasing the skill cap, since we do have several experienced players who are asking for that. One way that's built in already is the game speed option - you can set it to > 1.0 if you hold CTRL while you click the slider, and then type in your own number for this value.

[James Ryan]

Hello again, thx for your answer.

Sadly, this sounds very slavery from your side. You changed the game to become so easy to serve your kid customer that are not able to learn the game? I think its part to develop own skills in a game instead of changing the game to become that easy. You follow the modern bad game industry thinking and I really dislike your choose right here.

What do you say that I then probably need like only some hours to rush through your missions? I am no pro in this game. I just spamm what you want me to spamm to make it. You failed with your core element an campaign then...is this worth all the work you did put in there allready? The sadest fact is, that you DID allready better in the first game.

@Diffuculty. Ive figured out all difficult options allready (the one in the option, but also the one related to characters ai settings etc. but this is not solving the problem)..., so no need to talk about it here. It more is a argument for me, cause kids and newscomers can set difficulty back a lot. I cannot change ai to counter the spamm ♥♥♥♥. No option for me ; ( !

Jump + kick = 100% imbalanced (to easy)
Normal fight system = may to hard for newcomers

Why dont you serve tutorial help and challenging missions instead of what you do now (very bad decision)?

Greetings

[kavika]

Thanks for your opinions. I have read them, and we will consider them if and when we consider increasing the skill cap at a later date.

In the mean time, try getting more creative and challenging yourself in different ways. Hope that helps.

[James Ryan]

Hmmm, not sure if this minimal "Ive noticed your post" comment is taken serious from dev side at this point or if its just a standard answer to make people feel that problems will be solved "at a later date".

There are many points ive spoken about, but seems that theres no willingness to answer them seriously. I was planning to give this game a 10/10 rating. But with this reaction (seems like the problem is not seen at this point including that theres no fun to fix it or to develop the game until its solved), I will wait with that some more...if the game is killed by such easy stuff, the rating will be dramatically down from my side. Serving newcomers can be solved in a different way, really. That is made to easy from dev side.

Thank you for your time.

[kavika]

Originally posted by James Ryan:

There are many points ive spoken about, but seems that theres no willingness to answer them seriously.

I did take them seriously. They're also points I've heard many times, especially from people who had played Lugaru before Overgrowth.

You're in rant mode, and I'm not going to try to stop you. Better to let you tire yourself out, lol. I tried joking with you to start with, in case it amused you, but clearly that didn't work.

We're not working on the experience for max difficulty right now. If/when we do work on it, those points you made might be relevant, or they might become moot, depending on what design decisions we make at that time. I'd rather not speculate on design decisions in an area we're not working on changing right now.

[James Ryan]

Why are you trying to turn the topic into an emotional one?

Not seeing or ignoring problems is destroying the functional part of a forum or communication point with your customer. Instead of improving the fighting system to be more smart and add quality in there while keep it challenging, you serve the quantity of people which naturally think the game is to hard in the first place...however, I see the ignorant side is dominating at this point and the jump+kick all time killing problem isnt seen, so its also no more needed to continue this. The thread was time wasting...

[Wayward Will]

This conversation sort of got out of hand....on both sides in my opinion. Possibly due to a difficulty with the language (James I am assuming English is not your first language), your initial posts do read pretty hostile and demeaning to the work the developers have put into this game.

So I am not surprised you were responded to with a good amount of dismisal. Having said that I don't believe you meant it to sound as insulting as it did.

On the actual point being made, I have to agree that the combat in Overgrowth feels surprisingly much more shallow in many aspects than it did in Lugaru. While I understand that they are different games and that this is something that will be refined in the future, it is still surprising.

I especially agree that the jump kick is much too powerful, mainly because the AI does nothing to counter it. Again looking back at Lugaru (just accept that people will do this), I remember one of the original selling points of the game is that AIs would learn what moves the player favored and would more often defend against those moves if they were used too often. This made the jump-kick powerful if it landed but it nearly never landed and instead resulted in a very punishing slam on to the ground.

The OP was just suggesting that this behavior return, one I agree with, but we understand that this could be a future change.

EDIT: Oh and suggesting to simply not use something in the game does absolutely nothing to help the conversation along. The conversation is about what aspects of the game we believe should be looked at and tweaked, in the interest of making a hopefully even better game than it already is. How you choose to play the game, is your business.

[James Ryan]

You was hitting the point perfectly. Now, Im a game dev. too (which is why Im very very clear to our projects fans (detailed reporting on what we will change and how etc.). Thus, the answer here (dont do the jump + kick) was so frustrating that Ive made it very clear from my point as customer too. The game is ♥♥♥♥ like this, because I can dominate everything with this attack and I have no idea why its still ingame (do dev play their own game? Do they "not" do this attack?)? Its a strange thing.

However, no value was putted to my good meaned suggestion. Maybe devs understand with your 1:1 telling again cause the person who said it did change. Btw. good analytic communication skills...this is rare in this "rough" kid dominated steam forums. Thx for you comment and intention to make topic relevant again.

[kavika]

Originally posted by James Ryan:

However, no value was putted to my good meaned suggestion.

Your suggestion is valid. I guess I should have said that first. Thanks for taking the time to make your suggestion.

I replied to "I cannot prevent myself to spamm this all time" with the joke because I thought it was funny. So I made a joke which is a common response to "how to resolve a bad habit". I didn't mean to belittle your comment, and I'm sorry it came out that way.

My further replies were to tell you that we were focusing on other parts of the game. We have a small dev team and cannot accomplish every single thing, and definitely can't do them all at once. We might work on improving the upper skill cap in the future, but that's not our focus right now.

We've been focused on smoothing out the rough edges in the new Overgrowth story, making sure we can accommodate lower skill players (since our most common complaint is how hard the game is), and making the different species feel different to fight. I realize that doesn't help you right now, hence my suggestion for you to consider other parts of the game (like more difficult combat options) instead of just focusing on this one sore point.

Originally posted by James Ryan:

do dev play their own game? Do they "not" do this attack?

Of course we play it :) For us, using the jump kick on absolutely everything is about as interesting as doing a sweep kick 100% of the time, or turning on debug/cheat mode and spamming the lightning eyes key. It just isn't challenging, so we just don't do it. For us, the jump kick has its place, but we tend to only rely on it in sticky situations, or try to fight it out and die instead, and try again with a different tactic.

Since this thread has calmed down a bit, let me describe the thoughts that have run through my head at these suggestions:

Doing exactly what Lugaru did has become less interesting to us over time, even though a lot of people (including us) liked the combat in Lugaru. We also want to make Overgrowth's combat its own thing.

We have had a habit in the past of saying "yeah, we want to add this thing from Lugaru". We have also found over time that we ended up finding novel ways to solve similar design problems. For example, weapon throwing ended up being a fun way to add challenge to countering player fleeing. Also increasing wolf run speed but changing their inertia.

That doesn't mean that doing an air-grab counter isn't what we might end up doing. But other counters may end up being better for reasons that we discover while working on it. We find that doing the experiments locally and then adding what ends up the most fun, then taking feedback, tends to work out better than announcing every experiment ahead of time.

We also hear complaints about pretty much any thing we do, even if other people really like a given change. You can't please all the people all the time. We mitigate that by always making sure to balance these complaints against the experiences most people are having.

In our over-the-shoulder play testing, and in the majority of feedback we've gotten from new players, most people were not spamming the jump kick. It's mostly been the highest skill players who ended up doing that, and we've had luck in many cases with pointing out that it was optional. This is why we bucket this experiment in the "high skill cap" category, and why we're not focusing on it right now.

So yes, we've listened. Yes, we'll consider it. I can't promise we're going to nerf the jump kick, but we're thinking about it. If we do, it will probably be lumped in with other high skill cap changes. We also are interested in novel suggestions, besides a simple counter, if you have any.

[Wayward Will]

That all makes perfect sense to me. And I'm glad, and not surprised either, that this is something you have already thought about.

I do want to clarify something: I love the Overgrowth combat and how it differs from the Lugaru one. I believe that it is far superior and more interesting. My favorite change is the ability to block attacks instead of only throwing. It makes fights much more dynamic, interesting and action-movie looking.

As for a different counter to jump-kicking: one thing I can think of is to severely weaken its auto-aim capabilities. This means that while a powerful hit, it is very hard to land and very easy to dodge. Would make pulling it off definitely a high-skill cap mechanic without changing the dynamic of the fights too much.

[James Ryan]

Hello again,
so now it was happening what Ive feared all the time...yesterday evening, Ive started the campaign at hardest difficulty and this morning Ive finished the last 2 levels and now ive made it.

Well...the story itself (+maps/atmosphere is great). It could be better at some points, but all in all it was very fun.

@Jump kick + difficulty. It was exactly like Ive said. Ive killed the "normal" enemies without dangerous weapons very easily (blocking, fighting)...the figths were very intense. Fights against wolves, armored enemies or guys with heavy weapons mostly was a jump + kick (ai dont counter it) spamm. Thus, Ive killed everything the same boring way like Ive feared. I also was trying to not spamm it (like some people were telling -_-) but then it was a none-stop die-ing action too. Im good in countering and taking enemies knifes/swords etc., but sometimes its not working or if you fight against more then one, its getting a luck game and boring too. Thus, jump + spamm kick and the thing was done.

Part one of this game was HARDCORE challenging. This campaign sadly was feeling like GTA with cheat mods. If you like, you fight, if ai gets sucking, you play the cheats=jump kick in this game.

I have to say. Very nice potential (the campaign). But like Ive said, very sad that my suggestion wasnt cared yet. Now Ive seen the SP and Im not willing to play it again (even if its fixed post-years anytime)...to the fighting system... I have to say Part 1 was more challenging and intelligent/intense while this game is a victim of un-optimised fighting system + easy difficulty influenced by mass of fans. It was trying to get both interest groups, but now its a strange mix I cannot empathise/feel with.

Since mods/workshop content cannot really substitute a good fighting system/campaign with improved and balanced content and systems, Im very sad that this game is more like a sandbox (you have to do everything yourself which you normaly have no time for when beeing a normal working human)

My comment may sound very demanding/critizising but yes, related to that things were done great in part 1 allraedy and now we can see a getting "bader" in part 2 (like its common in movies etc.), Im sad for this and have to integrate it in how I see the game (recommendation voting).

With improved, intelligent fighting system (especially for sword/weapon fights), with Skirmish!!!!!!, with MP support, with more smooth and used parkour integration (its never used when fighting beside jump+kick spamm), this could have been a rare 10/10 game.

Like this, I only can give it a 6 or 7 from 10 while crying about how less missing to get to the 10. This game feels like if the most hard-fact dev. steps were reached allready (nice video settings,maps, awesome ai, ragdoll, physics, blood/gore system, editor, local co-op, workshop) while very little things were not done wich kills everything. Maybe something comes with the future, but yes...that would require some last steps to the target 10/10 title and from what I know from video games is, that the chances that it will happen are like zero.

All in all: A nice "good" game. Was fun at many points, but for playing it long term and much much more, its current form sadly is not reaching and it will stay in my steam account with less hours played within the next time. Thx for reading and maybe considering my points again. Bye

[Surak]

For what it is worth, I do agree with James. I think a lot of new players will play through the campaign mostly with jump kicks and chokes because they don't know there is a complex fighting system and they have no reason to learn it. The path of least resistance. As a result the game is incredibly easy, there is no proper challenge, and the players feel unsatisfied.

[n]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1183698125

[Wayward Will]

That is a good work-around solution. Thanks for the link!

[Serrated Sabre]

I personally wish the standing dodge mechanic was better explained. I went through the entire two campaigns (and the Thruem 2 mod) without knowing it. It was only when I noticed that sometimes my character was dodging attacks without blocking that I figured it out on my own. It's a really powerful tool in the player's bag of tricks while still feeling fun, and easy enough to mess up if you overdo it.

And it's super simple too: just tap a movement direction away from your opponent just before the opponent lands an attack on you. Works on both unarmed and armed attacks, but each attack must be dodged separately, so if the enemy changes of timing of its attack, you'll eventually take hits.

As for the leg cannon, yeah does need an eventual hard counter, though I currently don't see a way to change it. Taking off the damage entirely is too much, but maybe lowering the damage and the impulse might work better. Lower the impulse or push of when you leg cannon things would make it a little less safe, making it harder to to play keepaway once you land a hit.