Pacing too slow

[Jimbly]

My girlfriend and I have been trying to play this game, and enjoyed it at first, but with each of us having 6 characters and the size of enemy teams, the pacing is just way too slow. Every recent attempt to play has been:

• Load up game
  
• Choose a quest and exit town
  
• See something shiny, someone we want to capture, err, recruit
  
• Start giant battle
  
• (a while later) leave game running in background while we take a break, eat, or something
  
• Finish battle, realize we forgot our initial goal and failed to capture anyone :(
  
• Tired of game now, just want to save, so return to town and fail quest

After doing roughly this same thing 3 times, I think we've given up on the game. The battles just take too much time to do more than 1 (or sometimes even 1) in a sitting.

Other feedback/things that would help:

• Some way to save/"quicksave+resume" when out and about. Mid-battle would be great, but even when out in a field would be good. It's possible it does save at some point out there, but there's absolutely no way to look at the game and know that it's been saved, so we always go back to town and keep moving around between buildings until we notice a saving icon. Having a "Save and Exit" on the menu would be awesome.
  
• Smaller teams/battles - if for a 2 player game, we each controlled 3 characters and the battles were half the size (I'm assuming a single player game is like this anyway?) that seems like the pacing might be a *lot* better
  
• Better camera when giving orders - really often we ended up with her guys up top, mine below, and the camera zooms so we end up seeing both of our selection cursors, none of our guys (hers just off the top of the screen, mine just off the bottom) and only a few of the enemies. If the camera zoomed to include at least 4-5 hexes on any side of each cursor, that'd help a lot. We end up having to just take turns giving orders to each of our guys because of the frustrating camera, which also slows down battles a lot.
  
• Much longer delay before cursors time out - often when sitting and thinking, our selection cursor would disappear, snapping the camera around to the other person's cursor, disorienting both of us. I'd prefer it never disappear and mess up the camera as long as we haven't confirmed/locked in all of our orders. When two people are still giving orders, I cannot think of any situation in which you want the camera to whip around like that.

[Pip]

If each of you only bring 3 slots of units then the game will be more like singleplayer in terms of enemy amounts.
You can use comms (X key/button by default) to mark a unit with a cage icon so you don't forget to capture them (autobattler will also respect the commands, and ignore/prioritize units marked)
You can enable extra zoom-out in gameplay settings, but it doesn't help much with the co-op problem

[hairy peak]

Hurts to know it feels so bad for you, mate. In my experience, my main game is Rocket League, which consists in quick 5 minutes matches, and in general I never play a game for too long at one sitting. But I never felt Pit People was that slow or hard to keep on with tho :/

It always felt way more fluid and easy going than any other strategy game I played in the past, and the fact that you move all your guys at once makes it faster than other turn based games as well.

I'm not even a developer or someone who can help you, but I'm very curious. What games are you used to, to feel this way? Maybe you were looking for some game similar to Battleblock and found this by mistake?

Anyway I hope you enjoy this game some day, or find another game that makes you happier. Good luck!

[Jack Vitae]

Maybe because you haven't played other turn based games similar to Pit People, but this is by far one of the fastest ones out there.

I've been watching this one couple play Pit People for the last 2 days together on Twitch and they've had no problem with the speed, and have been enjoying the game the whole way though! The streamer couple is Craftglu, and they've been having a blast. They've only been playing in perma death as well, it's been fun talking with them and watching them play the game.

The point is, you're not going to have fun if you don't like the game genre. To say it's slow would be unfair in the sense it's one of the fastest of it's genre.

Also serious question, why would you want to control 3 people per person? That is the most boring strategy game I've ever heard of! I really think you're just not a fan of the genre of game, which is fine!

I'm sorry to hear you didn't like the game! but the critique is greatly appreciated! :D I hope maybe you can find a way to enjoy the game, or maybe the game will change in a way you'll enjoy!

[Jimbly]

Originally posted by Young Pipistrella:

If each of you only bring 3 slots of units then the game will be more like singleplayer in terms of enemy amounts.

Ah, we assumed if we each brought fewer, we'd just get destroyed, if that actually causes there to be fewer opponents, that is great to know, maybe we'll try again.

Originally posted by mochilo:

What games are you used to, to feel this way?

I've never seen a cooperative, same-screen, turn-based tactics game before, so I'm not used to any! Definitely most local co-op games I've played are much less deep than Pit People. Maybe the only exception is Atom Zombie Smasher, but that's not turn-based.

I'm a big fan of turn-based strategy/tactics games in general, though for games similar to Pit People, I have mostly just played portable versions - Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced and such. My girlfriend has never played any of those, however, so I thought this might be a good gateway game. I've played some of those co-op (I think FFT Advanced had a co-op over the link cable), and I'll admit they were definitely much slower battles that Pit People, however there was no meta-game we were trying to play, just battles there.

I think if I were playing this single player, battles would be 4-5 times faster (due to control issues, and having an occasional slow turn for one person tends to have slow turns quite often for multiple people), and the pacing might be just right (although I suspect the tactical depth is probably a little low for what I'd prefer for single player... but I haven't got far enough in the game to confirm that, and only picked this up for the multiplayer).

[Jimbly]

Originally posted by Jack Vitae:

Also serious question, why would you want to control 3 people per person?

That sounds reasonable if the game is balanced for a team of 6 people, then having us co-operatively control 6 people would make logical sense? Though each of us only give orders to our people, our team make-up and the tactics of our team would still be in regards to a 6 person team (just, co-operatively), so it should be at least as interesting as the single player (which, I'm assuming, is a 6-person team, not 12)?

[Pip]

Correct, in singleplayer you control a team of 6 slots. Also, the game adjusts enemy amount based on team members alive, so you won't get destroyed if you start a fight with one or two fighters dead.

[danpaladin]

Originally posted by Jimbly:

Originally posted by Jack Vitae:

Also serious question, why would you want to control 3 people per person?

That sounds reasonable if the game is balanced for a team of 6 people, then having us co-operatively control 6 people would make logical sense? Though each of us only give orders to our people, our team make-up and the tactics of our team would still be in regards to a 6 person team (just, co-operatively), so it should be at least as interesting as the single player (which, I'm assuming, is a 6-person team, not 12)?

The game takes into account how many active slots players are using total and balances it from there. You can each bring however many character you feel comfortable with.

You could also bring along a character or two that take 2 slots each like the Cyclops, Gorgon or Hair Troll which will reduce the amount of choices you'll have to make per turn.

If you're forgetting to recruit, you can use the comm icons (X button on controller by default) to mark an enemy with a cage as a reminder for later.

[Jimbly]

Originally posted by danpaladin:

The game takes into account how many active slots players are using total and balances it from there. You can each bring however many character you feel comfortable with.

You could also bring along a character or two that take 2 slots each like the Cyclops, Gorgon or Hair Troll which will reduce the amount of choices you'll have to make per turn.

If you're forgetting to recruit, you can use the comm icons (X button on controller by default) to mark an enemy with a cage as a reminder for later.

We're trying this now, with 3 each, and battles are a lot more fun, more manageable, can actually do more than one battle in a sitting ^_^. But, it appears we can no longer select the main quest, it has an icon that seems to indicate we need a full set of 6 people, presumably in whichever player is selecting the quest :(. Is that always the case with the main quest, or just the particular step we're at? Would be nice if our team of 6 on two controllers qualified the same as a team of 6 on one controller :(.

I can't get the comms icons to work, X seems to do nothing, is that only in online play, not local?

[Pip]

Check if they're enabled in the gameplay settings.

[danpaladin]

Originally posted by Jimbly:

Originally posted by danpaladin:

The game takes into account how many active slots players are using total and balances it from there. You can each bring however many character you feel comfortable with.

You could also bring along a character or two that take 2 slots each like the Cyclops, Gorgon or Hair Troll which will reduce the amount of choices you'll have to make per turn.

If you're forgetting to recruit, you can use the comm icons (X button on controller by default) to mark an enemy with a cage as a reminder for later.

We're trying this now, with 3 each, and battles are a lot more fun, more manageable, can actually do more than one battle in a sitting ^_^. But, it appears we can no longer select the main quest, it has an icon that seems to indicate we need a full set of 6 people, presumably in whichever player is selecting the quest :(. Is that always the case with the main quest, or just the particular step we're at? Would be nice if our team of 6 on two controllers qualified the same as a team of 6 on one controller :(.

One of you will have to equip the required story characters, so you could potentially have Horatio, Pipistrella, and 2 Cyclops as your team for a total of 4 characters.

[Jimbly]

Originally posted by danpaladin:

One of you will have to equip the required story characters, so you could potentially have Horatio, Pipistrella, and 2 Cyclops as your team for a total of 4 characters.

That doesn't seem to be true. We equipped all 3 story characters each, and it still would not let us select the quest (quest was getting the ticket back from Jerkimedes). We then changed our party to not have any story characters (except 1 Horatio, I think), and just our 12 best, and then it let us select the quest. Same thing seems to be going on with the next quest. The UI clearly indicates that it wants us to take 12 characters:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1264997900

[danpaladin]

Sorry, I was not clear enough.

If you have Horatio, Pipistrella, 2 Cyclops on your team then you'd have 6 slots full on your end. However, the other person would have to bring 3 two-slotters if they wanted to maintain three characters for 6 slots on their end. The game is checking that both players have filled their teams out and met the requirement. However only one of you needs to have the required story characters equipped.

The game does not account for the total of both player teams adding up for a total of 6 primarily because we did not foresee your scenario at all. We've never heard of this problem before this, so it just wasn't on our radar. I do apologize for the inconvienience.

[Dr. August]

I'll agree that the camera is a royal pain in local Co-op games. It needs to have both players cursors on screen at all times. Having the camera jerk away from me when I'm trying to move my units is infuriating.

[danpaladin]

We agree with camera feedback and have been adjusting the way cursor will react in co-op. It will be included in our release that isn't very far away!

[Dr. August]

Can't wait for full release! I've almost fully completed the preview build on Xbox.