Difficulty Level - too hard or too easy?

[a.zasadny]

We are incredibly curious about your reception of the game, especially its difficulty level. If you can, share your thoughts with us. Is the game challenging enough? Or maybe it's too easy?

[craig]

On its easiest difficulty, the game is well suited for beginner players who are new to deck builders. But progressing through the levels becomes increasingly difficult to a point of immense frustration. I myself am a big fan of Slay The Spire, and am able to tell that is near impossible to actually complete the hardest difficulty. I used Frogmar with the shield slam card, and somehow made it all the way to the end, only to have ALL of my cards exausted by skitterpaw. I was able to make it that far with Deckard Cardwell, yet he (in my opinion) still isnt good enough after giving you an extra energy. Might I suggest a 25% bonus to mystberries or something along those lines?

[Woelrat]

A few things come to mind:
*The elite golem is too strong. You need infinite damage, a stun or a a buildup for high damage. Decks that rely on small repeated damage are chanceless.
*The snake that eats your money/berries is too punishing.
*I don't like how the economy works. I'd prefer it if you wouldn't get more berries if you don't spend anything and prices get adjusted a bit to compensate. Having just the bird reward you for hording berries is fine. Also paying berries too freeze one blessing feels terrible, I'd prefer it to be free but freezes the whole shop.

[craig]

Sneakabbys is to hard. Even with Eftus, it has too much health, and steals too often. If I have a sub-par team, I lose everything and basicaly instantly fail the run. Also, puting it behind shadeclaw (which has 100 health) is just plain cruel.

[craig]

I was going on my run with Frogmar, and encountered the Phantamer. Initially, I expected to crush the boss with ease. Farther into the fight, I realized his attacks were progressively doing more damage. Because I could only take out one phantom at a time, he was at about 220 health and doing 23 damage 3 times. I cant block that much even with Frogmar. Am I supposed to just rush him down? I didnt even have that many offensive cards. Just seems unbalanced.

[Keith]

I don't win every game on lvl 1 but I win most of them and often without losing any health against the boss so I am finding lvl 1 too easy. However there is such a huge jump to lvl 2, why so much? I would like a level somewhere around half the difference between lvl 1 and 2. I've never won on lvl 2. Also I don't enjoy lvl 2 because of the shorter time in the village. I would prefer the time to always remain at 12 days and use other means to differentiate the levels. It's more fun if you have 12 days in village.

Also the poison should have a finite time. If you don't have Eftus to drag the poison guy to the front you can be screwed if you go into a hard battle early and have a poison guy behind a 75 point tank. I lost 2 mystlings in the scenario yesterday and had to abandon. It almost forces you to bring Eftus on every run, though I don't.

Really liking the game though.

[Keith]

More to my previous post about the difference in lvl 1 and 2 being to vast. Earlier I played a Deckard game with Glarexus and Frogmar, it was a fun game and didn't any health in the final boss battle. So I thought I would try lvl 2 with the same crew and I lost in Frogmar in the 1st battle and I just abandoned at that point!

[Fleisch]

Normal is too hard, there's zero learning curve other than "there's a wall go hit your face against it".

[The Nue]

So I only got about an hour in, so let me be clear that my response is not comprehensive for the game as a whole nor do I intend for it to be, BUT (and I say this because it warrants it's own agnostic consideration)...

The difficult early game feels like it sucks.

The weird risk/reward investment thing of incentivising us hoarding growth resources, taking on extra challenges to get more growth resources, but also healing requires resources, forcing us to find some razor-thin margin of challenging ourselves vs playing it safe with no option to "undo" if we mess up... it feels profoundly frustrating and un-fun. Every time enemy intents show something like "Attack all" or "Attack random" I wanna curse a blue streak because health lost is money lost is growth lost and there's virtually nothing you can do early game to prevent health loss in those scenarios.

Like I don't doubt "Well you need X Trainer/Mystling/Card/Passive" could fix it, my point is that as a new player booting the game up, I don't have those things (or need to get lucky to be offered those things) and it leaves me wanting to punch a wall. Like whatever the state of play is late game (and I don't doubt it could indeed get too easy), early game difficulty feels annoying rather than "pleasantly challenging".

I feel like this is egregiously exacerbated by how slow the early game grind feels. Like I cleared 5 fights and got... 35% of the way to my first level up? Man, that made me SUPER unhappy, if I'm being blunt; learning that I was gonna hafta start getting much farther or I'm looking at repeating dud runs 3 times before I gain anything.

I never did get that level up even after 3 runs incidentally, because I decided to reset my progress so I could try one of the other Mystlings instead; which idk if this is the appropriate thread to point it out per say but it frankly feels like a ludicrous decision that we have to select one without seeing their kit and there is no undoing the decision.

I was super excited for this game after trying the demo during NextFest, but gotta be honest that I was expecting a much more polished release. Earlygame feels annoying and unfair, and I'll take others at their word if they say it later boomerangs to get too easy or be in a good place, but it is a PROBLEM in my mind the sort of patience the early state of play requires. Like pressing on much longer would lock me out of the option of refunding if I went on to find out I never end up happy with the difficulty, so hate to say it: but I can't justify that. Fixed income and such, I gotta refund. Maybe I'll check in later and see what patches have been implemented, re-buy it... like the core ideas are cool and I wanted to like this. But if the jury is out if there are even plans to address this... it's a "no" from me, dawg.

[Keith]

You can't judge a game after an hours play. In the beginning I was spending money on heals too, but that is a waste. I soon learned how to block damage and heal in game some. I spend most of money on enhancing power levels but also some on the occasional card and food.

[The Nue]

Originally posted by Keith:

You can't judge a game after an hours play. In the beginning I was spending money on heals too, but that is a waste. I soon learned how to block damage and heal in game some. I spend most of money on enhancing power levels but also some on the occasional card and food.

*sighs*
No, but you can judge the first hour of a game after an hour's play, and that's the point I was making if you read my comment carefully.
You wanna gift me the game, knock yourself out. I'm not made of money.
And since the devs are literally asking us if/how opinion on difficulty might be affecting play opinions, I told them.

[Keith]

I just pointed out how your judgement in only an hour was not valid. You won't spend much money on healing once you unlock and learn the rest of the game. I'm not rich by any means but I can afford to gift someone this game--coming through

[Keith]

Can someone tell how to gift a game. I selected the Steam (Select the recipient) dropdown in the shopping cart but that didn't work. Maybe you have to be someone's friend to gift a game? That would be a stupid prerequisite if so.

[TheTempleKnight]

Ya'll... I'm playing easy and I am lucky to get through the easy battles every time starting a run. I feel like I have a solid strategy down and am understanding the game better, but at the end of the day the difficulty doesn't feel like a skill issue -- losing just feels unfair and makes me want to stop playing.

[Zaphod]

Definitely some balance issues in combats and line-ups, and the idea that a difficulty spike means reducing the number of encounters is totally counter-intuitive when those encounters are what allow you to evolve your mystlings - one of the bigger draws of the game. Additionally, the acid/poison effect inflicted by enemies is a run-ender because it's an affliction that doesn't decrease upon triggering. It makes it near impossible to run egg, which is already its own fun little hindrance/challenge. I feel like there's some proscription to the line-ups you choose, as some three-star fights are nigh unbeatable without the right line-up (looking at you Rock Golem Thing) but being able to level up your deck's cards is a staple in this genre and only possible through beating those three-star fights. Why it's not a shop option, I have no idea.

[Keith]

I can't get anywhere playing lvl 2 and I'm not getting any closer. I just gave up after the first battle because Glarexus lost so much health. But not enough challenge in lvl 1. I'll check back later but there is not an option for me to play on right now.