3 Fundamental issues I have with this game's balance

[Parrot]

Honestly, I will say I lack skill in this game type. I've played a bit of some bullet hell types and a few bullet dungeon crawlers like Binding of Isaac, but I never remember it being so consistently frustrating to get to the finall boss once I figured the basic mechanics out even if I got hit a few times alone the way.

But dungeon just slowly kills me off and it took me awhile to figure out the 3 main reasons why:

1 - Dodge rolling is 8 pointed, same speed, same distance, but bullets can come from anywhere and various speeds at any time (of course you can watch the enemies and try to plan it out, but with the sheer amount of bullets that show up, it's going to take a TON of practice to avoid every single situation like that).

2 - The enemies that look the same get so much more health each floor despite the same guns if not worse being available on every floor

3 - Curse (you can sometimes gain it without any consent on your part from things like the map quests or from items that had no appearance indicating the punishment). This wouldn't be a big problem if the dodge roll wasn't so infuriatingly tricky.


After realizing I took most if not all of my damage from dodge rolling into other shots, I played for a round without using it at all until I felt I had zero options (Even taking some hits to try to make it through really tiny bullet gaps), and of course things turned out a lot better, but I felt so misslead. Now I have to master precise dodging with a keyboard which is infuriatingly difficult compared to a controller, but if I use a controller there is very little to indicate where my shots are going to go so not wasting ammo is far more difficult.

I thought the dodge roll was to make up for that and let me relax a little more knowing I can dodge if I just don't feel like I'll make the correct move for that one moment, and attacks like the iron maiden's and the bosses giant grid spreads were to force you to actually dodge without rolling, but gave you lots of spacing and time to think it out.

I guess I find this game a little too random and too hard core. I beat all the pasts, but I mostly just felt driven too and wasn't having fun a lot of the time. I'm just not aware enough of my surroundings to keep track of every single enemy and their next shot timing and how I have to move to this area and trigger that enemy and then this one and that and then plan out the various timings of their shots 10 seconds in advance etc etc...I can only handle responding to what shows up on screen and a few seconds ahead of planning and even then the dodge rolls forced options on such a variety of attacks can checkmate you from time to time.

Health isn't guarenteed enough (again, wouldn't be an issue with controlled dodge rolling) and shop prices are so high but you HAVE to buy power ups and guns or winning will be dauntingly tiresome for you as the enemy health increases despite such a high chance of getting weak weapons on lower floors and no damage power ups AND new enemies with even more health and attack patterns show up.

There are a lot of ways to make Gungeon more of a Fun game that I would've preferred being added or altered, but it's not like the game isn't doing well as is. Just hurts to know I won't be having fun a majority of the time because of the tedius and time sucking requirements of the game to "get gud" in ways that feel missleading or like the game is tricking me into a bad situation. I'll be sure to check out the updates, but a game asking 30 minutes to 1 hour of my time per round without some sort of promise that there would be something good about it at least 75% of the time feels like a waste.

[D2daICE]

"Dodge rolling is 8 pointed"
Do you mean you only have eight directions to go in? I assume you play with a keyboard, you have much more control over your movement/dodge roll on a controller (also more control over your movement speed)

Which brings me to "After realizing I took most if not all of my damage from dodge rolling into other shots"

Most shots can easily be avoided by good movement and not dodge rolling. Dodge rolling should be your last resort if you have no other chance to avoid damage. If you are backed into a wall/obstacle and a shot will come your way you can't avoid by simple movements then just dodge roll into the wall/obstacle because you are invincible for a short time - can save you in tight spots.

Health scaling is pretty subjective, some people are bothered by it, some don't. I'm not very good at Gungeon myself (first chamber 5 boss kill at around 70 hours) but it doesn't bother me much.

About curse:
What do you mean with "from things like the map quests"?

There are shrines that always increase your curse, all items from cursula will (as her name suggests) and if you get "cursed" items from chests then they will have a black shimmer/cloud surrounding them.

"I guess I find this game a little too random and too hard core."
Not sure what you did expect by buying this game because it's a mix between rogue-lite games (the RNG aspect) and bullet hell games (which means even more difficulty than regular rogue-lites).
Maybe you'd expect the wrong thing from enter the gungeon because it's not really like Binding of Isaac or Rogue Legacy or Risk of Rain.

But it's interesting that you did beat all four pasts but still have trouble with the core game mechanics. I've only beaten one past so far (after 116 hours) and most things i have to complain about are my own lack of skills which lead me into danger.

Shop prices can be high, true and the same items will get pricier every chamber but if you don't get hit often then you'll most likely have a lot of shells in most runs (not all because of RNG but i would say most).

Conclusion (at least how it seems to me):
You expected a game that is more similar to the kind of games that is The Binding of Isaac but since it's also a bullet hell game skill is key part of mastering it - combine this with the (bad) RNG part of rogue-lite games and you have a game that relies heavily on your own skill and not broken item combinations.

[Parrot]

Originally posted by D2daICE:

"Dodge rolling is 8 pointed"
Do you mean you only have eight directions to go in? I assume you play with a keyboard, you have much more control over your movement/dodge roll on a controller (also more control over your movement speed)

Which brings me to "After realizing I took most if not all of my damage from dodge rolling into other shots"

Most shots can easily be avoided by good movement and not dodge rolling. Dodge rolling should be your last resort if you have no other chance to avoid damage. If you are backed into a wall/obstacle and a shot will come your way you can't avoid by simple movements then just dodge roll into the wall/obstacle because you are invincible for a short time - can save you in tight spots.

Health scaling is pretty subjective, some people are bothered by it, some don't. I'm not very good at Gungeon myself (first chamber 5 boss kill at around 70 hours) but it doesn't bother me much.

About curse:
What do you mean with "from things like the map quests"?

There are shrines that always increase your curse, all items from cursula will (as her name suggests) and if you get "cursed" items from chests then they will have a black shimmer/cloud surrounding them.

"I guess I find this game a little too random and too hard core."
Not sure what you did expect by buying this game because it's a mix between rogue-lite games (the RNG aspect) and bullet hell games (which means even more difficulty than regular rogue-lites).
Maybe you'd expect the wrong thing from enter the gungeon because it's not really like Binding of Isaac or Rogue Legacy or Risk of Rain.

But it's interesting that you did beat all four pasts but still have trouble with the core game mechanics. I've only beaten one past so far (after 116 hours) and most things i have to complain about are my own lack of skills which lead me into danger.

Shop prices can be high, true and the same items will get pricier every chamber but if you don't get hit often then you'll most likely have a lot of shells in most runs (not all because of RNG but i would say most).

Conclusion (at least how it seems to me):
You expected a game that is more similar to the kind of games that is The Binding of Isaac but since it's also a bullet hell game skill is key part of mastering it - combine this with the (bad) RNG part of rogue-lite games and you have a game that relies heavily on your own skill and not broken item combinations.

I feel like you didn't read everything I said since some of your points act like I didn't bring them up myself.

I mentioned pretty much immediately that I did do much better when I relied on dodging normally instead of dodge rolling large groups of bullets, HOWEVER because I don't use a controller it is far more difficult to dodge bullets since you have jerky movement and only the 8 pointed dodge. You simply get checkmated a lot.

Broken item combinations are a lot of fun, but that's not what I was expecting non stop. Maybe once every 5 games, but not like 1/3,1/2, or 1/1. It's a fair hope in my opinion since I tend to always get to chamber 4 (which takes about 30 minutes of my time), but unless I get certain items, beating the bosses there, the enemies on 5, and the boss on 5 is just a pipe dream. I can't avoid enough of insane number of bullets.

The map quests if you haven't gotten it already gives you an item reward and shoves it right into your inventory, same with the room clear quests. The issue with this is that (at least for the map guy) I have gotten cursed weapons and been forced to suffer the consequences. There are also cursed items in shops that do not have any black aura around them indicating the curse.

The shrine that takes one heart container AND gives you curse is ridiculous.

Also I figured out that "dodge roll into a wall" thing pretty early on. It doesn't help in some cases if you have a weaker gun on lower floors and haven't already killed the key problems.

I don't mind occasionally just getting a bad round, but this game feels so randomly balanced. It feels like the developers just played it a LOT with a controller, gained a lot of skill and understanding of their own game, and then it just didn't matter what happened each run. I mean, what's the point of the cursed dragon head room if there is a very reasonable chance you won't have enough money to buy anything on that floor if you bought ANYTHING previously?

You rarely get enough keys naturally so if you really want to unbox most of the chests you need to buy keys.

Some of the bosses (like the bird and the tank) just get way too up close and personal which makes bullet density too tight and jerky with very little chance to dodge roll safely on a keyboard.

I'm in a bit of a sour mood so this might be out of line for me to say, but it feels like this game's main points of success come from an adorable concept of gun themed enemies that kind of gave up half way through (shape wizards? slimes? knights? hammers? etc.) but the art still looks great so it doesn't really matter, the fun of loot and RNG, and utilizing tons of existing enjoyable video game concepts and then mashing them all together. Fairly surprised I didn't see a portal gun, but maybe that was too frustrating to code because of glitches.

The game itself isn't that original, but it's rare to have so many weapon concepts together. The main job to make this game truly impressive is to balance it in a way that is sweet and enjoyable. To stick with the main themes, find a unique musical style (this music was so bland I turned it off almost immediately after my second run), and then make the concepts your copying belong in your art style and theme so everything tastes like "Gungeon". The game spent so much time including ideas from everywhere that it seemed to ignore it's own core mechanics and balance the ideas already in place. Maybe they just decided to make it super random instead of trying to give a consistent but varied experience.


That last paragraph probably doesn't make sense so forgive me for including it. I've got a headache and I think and believe a lot of things I don't have any clue how to explain to someone else who doesn't already get it. A couple of my friends would get what I meant though.

If I could make one last suggestion: Damage numbers. Little indicators of remaining health would be nice too, but please damage numbers as an option. That lack of information is just unsettling. It makes telling effectiveness of items too much guess work and on floors where health keeps changing, when you get cursed for the sake of some vague shrine buff called "stronger" not knowing how much that helped just ticks me off. It makes it feel worthless if it still took the same number of bullets to kill the enemies. I can't tell if it made my damage +1, or +5 because the healths of the enemies might vary by 100/100. Sure there is a wiki where that information is available, but why isn't it just part of the game?




Whatever, I could sit here for much longer pointing out everything that bothers me, but it's still a good game. I just wanted to address the main concern of keyboard players and dodging being such a trap.

[D2daICE]

Wow, that's really a wall of text and i won't answer to all of it but i did read your full post before but was typing the answer after reading some parts, read another, write on that and so on and some things are just my opinion that doesn't get invalid just because you said a similar thing later.

"Some of the bosses (like the bird and the tank) just get way too up close and personal which makes bullet density too tight and jerky with very little chance to dodge roll safely on a keyboard."

The Gattling Gull, on a room with no obstacles, can be pretty annoying but it is possible to flawless it because some of his "spray"shot patterns can be manipulated by your movement and for the Treadnaught i never really had the problem that he got too close to me.

If you keep your distance then you can make him move pretty much like the way you want and around the corners of the map - also let him destroy as much pillars as possible, makes the fight more easy in my opinion.

I also get to chamber 4 pretty regular by now but still have trouble with chamber 5.

I do now understand what you mean with the map quest but this is a RNG thing which you have to "accept" in such games.

[Carrier Pidgeons]

Dropping cursed items seems to subtract the curse, from what I've heard.

[Parrot]

Originally posted by Carrier Pidgeons:

Dropping cursed items seems to subtract the curse, from what I've heard.

I hope so

[ergo]

Originally posted by Carrier Pidgeons:

Dropping cursed items seems to subtract the curse, from what I've heard.

I can second that.

Besides, even at 0 curse, you will still get jammed enemies in Bullet Hell, and at 1-2 curse, they don't spawn on pre-Bullet Hell floors too often. Actually, they're very, very rare. So just drop those Excalibers and Fightsabers to reduce your curse (cursed passives can be dropped to reduce curse as well), they really aren't worth it, and be on the lookout for Cursula's bargains. Hers more often than not are.

All in all, curse is pretty fair in my opinion.

[Carrier Pidgeons]

Curse has three levels.

1-7 is like "so what I'm cursed", where jammed enemies show up rarely. Hardly a problem.

8-9 are like "woah better slow down a little", where jammed enemies are pretty much everywhere

10 is Lord, which kills runs.

[Parrot]

Originally posted by D2daICE:

Wow, that's really a wall of text and i won't answer to all of it but i did read your full post before but was typing the answer after reading some parts, read another, write on that and so on and some things are just my opinion that doesn't get invalid just because you said a similar thing later.

"Some of the bosses (like the bird and the tank) just get way too up close and personal which makes bullet density too tight and jerky with very little chance to dodge roll safely on a keyboard."

The Gattling Gull, on a room with no obstacles, can be pretty annoying but it is possible to flawless it because some of his "spray"shot patterns can be manipulated by your movement and for the Treadnaught i never really had the problem that he got too close to me.

If you keep your distance then you can make him move pretty much like the way you want and around the corners of the map - also let him destroy as much pillars as possible, makes the fight more easy in my opinion.

I also get to chamber 4 pretty regular by now but still have trouble with chamber 5.

I do now understand what you mean with the map quest but this is a RNG thing which you have to "accept" in such games.

Let's say they decided to add to the game a chance that you walk into a room and there is a boss enemy from Chamber 4, just sitting there. When you kill it you won't get any special loot either. Would you still say, "It's just an RNG thing you have to accept?"

I know it's an extreme example and this isn't the same. But the point is that I care about finer balance points that make all the difference, like a tilted painting. Very few people realize how details make more difference than anything else and thats why so many games just sort of dissapear overtime and others do not. Things that seem small and unimportant change so much. Simple ambience in the background can be the difference between someone getting scared and lonely, and someone getting bored.

I believe myself to understand a lot of the finer balance points simply because as a person I have close to no frustration tolerance preventing me from noticing details. It's not like it's some mental illness like OCD, it's just that I'm always in a state of frustration from person choice on how I view the world so I never just "let things" go before I think about them. like I said I have so many more things I could bring up but I'm trying to be thoughtful and not throw everything on the table. I was even spending some time filling a notepad with details and then a couple of the bugs I noticed got patched (familiar attackers attacking the REDACTED).

So pointing out details you are capable of shrugging off doesn't make them invalid either. You miss the finer points of how something can wear down on a player overtime, especially in a game with such a large time investment but yet so much RNG that could easily ruin it. What's the point of a game that doesn't help you feel better while still being a challange? If it's just going to keep throwing bad RNG at you what's the point unless you're someone who already has enough tolerance to begin with and could enjoy any game? What makes this one worthwhile?

But that's how I feel. I could be just as easily naive as I am ignorant. I felt it was worth the small possibility I was right and the smaller chance someone cared to mention my thoughts.

[Parrot]

Originally posted by ergo:

Originally posted by Carrier Pidgeons:

Dropping cursed items seems to subtract the curse, from what I've heard.

I can second that.

Besides, even at 0 curse, you will still get jammed enemies in Bullet Hell, and at 1-2 curse, they don't spawn on pre-Bullet Hell floors too often. Actually, they're very, very rare. So just drop those Excalibers and Fightsabers to reduce your curse (cursed passives can be dropped to reduce curse as well), they really aren't worth it, and be on the lookout for Cursula's bargains. Hers more often than not are.

All in all, curse is pretty fair in my opinion.

Curse isn't fun because it's not worth it EXCEPT for the Fightsaber alone. Abusing it's ability to reflect bullets for so long makes taking out the dragon and the kill pillars a joke. You can reflect so much of their own attacks you don't even need to shoot them yourself. Just toss 1 bullet and time your reload for maximum rude.

A mechanic isn't balanced just because you can ignore it.

Next keep in mind part of balance is still being part of the game and is NOT depending on looking up things on the wiki to learn the details. Not everything should be about "how it feels" but you need to keep that in mind because a game is about improving someone's psychological state through challanges that are enjoyable. The times I've gotten cursed I usually ended up with cursed enemies in horrible rooms and horribly strong ones. It was rarely just a bullet or even just a shotgunkin. I never got too much curse to spawn tons of them, but even when they showed up rarely and WEREN'T one of the tough enemies, they became a second priority in rooms that usually force you to pick and choose who you need to kill immediately to avoid a checkmate shot. When there are 2 of thosse with more health than whatever gun you currently have killing them in one clip, you could easily take half a heart to a whole heart of damage, especially if it's something like a cursed buff or a buffer buffing a cursed.

There needs to be more of a payoff for suffering that mechanic or a change in how it works (like just more enemies per room might actually be fun because of a chance for a little more cash though more bullets to think about). Each level of curse adding one more enemy in such rooms could be insane and entertaining at the same time. Still I don't know if I'd actually suggest this idea since I would start going out of my way for 1 or 2 levels of curse which makes it's supposed "downside" not entirely one. Then again none of the cursed items or effecets besides the Fightsaber are even worth it so I can't imagine it would be the worst idea.

[D2daICE]

Originally posted by Will-e:

Let's say they decided to add to the game a chance that you walk into a room and there is a boss enemy from Chamber 4, just sitting there. When you kill it you won't get any special loot either. Would you still say, "It's just an RNG thing you have to accept?"


You miss the finer points of how something can wear down on a player overtime, especially in a game with such a large time investment but yet so much RNG that could easily ruin it.

Just take the example i have right now:
Starting a run, getting a glitch chest on chamber one and opening it when you don't know what it does - you are pretty muched fu****.
Or the Door Lord when you encounter him the first time, he will most likely screw you over and can appear on chamber 2 the first time.

It's brutal because they will most likely ruin your day in a heartbeat if you are new to the game (happened to me with the Door Lord early on) - yes, that's RNG, can happen and honestly i don't care about it in such games.

About the second part:
There aren't that many games in which i put hundreds of hours.
The only ones that come to my mind are:
Borderlands (200-500 hours), Borderlands 2 (almost 1000 hours), Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (250+ hours), Terraria (400+ hours), Starbound (200+ hours), Cave Story (which i played many times over on PC and 3DS in it's different versions) and some games on my 3DS (mostly Pokemon when shiny hunting or breeding).

I can only speak for myself in that regard:
Those games aren't perfect and have their own flaw, especially some games shortly after they have been released but those are games where i really enjoyed the gameplay loop and that's why i could look over some flaws that made them tedious at grinding (Borderlands) and especially breeding for shiny Pokemon can consume a lot of time and be so freaking boring and monotone >.<

But what connects all these games is the fact that i enjoyed the gameplay loop so much that it doesn't really bother me when they became grindy, other games that were fun for some time and are great games i just gave up at some point because i didn't enjoy the core mechanics enough to be played over and over and over.

Maybe you experience that with Gungeon now but it's really hard to put it in words what i exactly mean.

[Slatepaws]

I am getting tired of the whole 'controller has 360 movement' It has the same 8 directional movement pattern as the keyboard but eaiser to transition between directions. This seems to be a limit the version of the unity engine they are using.

[Parrot]

Originally posted by D2daICE:

Originally posted by Will-e:

Let's say they decided to add to the game a chance that you walk into a room and there is a boss enemy from Chamber 4, just sitting there. When you kill it you won't get any special loot either. Would you still say, "It's just an RNG thing you have to accept?"


You miss the finer points of how something can wear down on a player overtime, especially in a game with such a large time investment but yet so much RNG that could easily ruin it.

Just take the example i have right now:
Starting a run, getting a glitch chest on chamber one and opening it when you don't know what it does - you are pretty muched fu****.
Or the Door Lord when you encounter him the first time, he will most likely screw you over and can appear on chamber 2 the first time.

It's brutal because they will most likely ruin your day in a heartbeat if you are new to the game (happened to me with the Door Lord early on) - yes, that's RNG, can happen and honestly i don't care about it in such games.

About the second part:
There aren't that many games in which i put hundreds of hours.
The only ones that come to my mind are:
Borderlands (200-500 hours), Borderlands 2 (almost 1000 hours), Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (250+ hours), Terraria (400+ hours), Starbound (200+ hours), Cave Story (which i played many times over on PC and 3DS in it's different versions) and some games on my 3DS (mostly Pokemon when shiny hunting or breeding).

I can only speak for myself in that regard:
Those games aren't perfect and have their own flaw, especially some games shortly after they have been released but those are games where i really enjoyed the gameplay loop and that's why i could look over some flaws that made them tedious at grinding (Borderlands) and especially breeding for shiny Pokemon can consume a lot of time and be so freaking boring and monotone >.<

But what connects all these games is the fact that i enjoyed the gameplay loop so much that it doesn't really bother me when they became grindy, other games that were fun for some time and are great games i just gave up at some point because i didn't enjoy the core mechanics enough to be played over and over and over.

Maybe you experience that with Gungeon now but it's really hard to put it in words what i exactly mean.

Yeah but both of those are exciting secrets that can (and for me did) happen early in a run so it ended right there instead of being a headache spread over 40 minutes. I'm constantly hoping to run into them again because I want to show them up for tricking me.

Gungeon for me is missing many details in it's core gameplay but only ONE change needs to be made to make looping through it satisfying, challanging, but not constantly full of "gosh damn it again with that one bullet covering my roll again" feelings: dodge roll control.

One wrong move can ruin a game's loop and then that's that. Take for example if they made every room 1 block smaller all around (except hallways). Thats it, it will make the entire game just slightly more annoying enough to make you want to leave MUCH sooner and only play it occasionaly until you remember what annoyed you so much. Details matter so much because they're what slowly gets to you like sandpaper. You think "oh that surface wasn't so rough" until the 30th time you slide over it.

[Parrot]

Originally posted by Slatepaws:

I am getting tired of the whole 'controller has 360 movement' It has the same 8 directional movement pattern as the keyboard but eaiser to transition between directions. This seems to be a limit the version of the unity engine they are using.

If it has the same limitations then why is he bringing it up as a point? Also doesn't it have some amount of speed control as well, or is that also not the case? I'm using a keyboard so it isn't like I can verify for sure, but the one time I did use the controller I thought I was doing lightly angled dodge rolls at some points.

[Slatepaws]

Originally posted by Will-e:

Originally posted by Slatepaws:

I am getting tired of the whole 'controller has 360 movement' It has the same 8 directional movement pattern as the keyboard but eaiser to transition between directions. This seems to be a limit the version of the unity engine they are using.

If it has the same limitations then why is he bringing it up as a point? Also doesn't it have some amount of speed control as well, or is that also not the case? I'm using a keyboard so it isn't like I can verify for sure, but the one time I did use the controller I thought I was doing lightly angled dodge rolls at some points.

It gives the illusion of 360 degree movement because you can move the joystick as such, the game only still registers the 8 directional points though on the joystick. It is just easier to transistion between them. I tested it last night with a wired xbox-360 controller. Dodging is still only in the 8 directional points as well.
Overall i found the controller controlls to feel like they were tacked onto the game, you can't aim with it. If you use the right stick to point in the direction of a gundead and it's pointing right at it the gun will still suddenly switch to another direction when you fire once or twice ocasonally till the auto-aim forces it to fire again in the direction you originally wanted..

[D2daICE]

Originally posted by Will-e:

Also doesn't it have some amount of speed control as well, or is that also not the case? I'm using a keyboard so it isn't like I can verify for sure, but the one time I did use the controller I thought I was doing lightly angled dodge rolls at some points.

You can control how fast you move with a controller which is, in my opinion, a HUGE bonus for dodging bullets more reliably. On a keyboard you only have "full" speed, on a controller you can move VERY slow (which looks hilarious because your character will still be in the running animation).

Originally posted by Slatepaws:

Overall i found the controller controlls to feel like they were tacked onto the game, you can't aim with it. If you use the right stick to point in the direction of a gundead and it's pointing right at it the gun will still suddenly switch to another direction when you fire once or twice ocasonally till the auto-aim forces it to fire again in the direction you originally wanted..

Since you can adjust the amount of aim assist in the gameplay section of the options menu you should find a way to make it suitable for your needs.

The default aim assist was too much for me so i toned it down. Sure it isn't as precise as a mouse but it has other benefits, which i value more and prefer.
I can aim pretty good with the controller and even picking out a specific enemy in a crowd can be done pretty easily when you adjust the controls a bit.

The only thing i didn't like about the controller is the standard button layout which was a pain to use but after rebinding some buttons it works perfect for me.