Middle- to endgame balance (minor spoilers)

[menghao]

Thinking about it, I suppose it was after getting the Arena gear that my dude rocketed up in the power charts. After that it seems like all the enemies hit for 1 or 2 damage. Is it just that DEF gives a bit too much of an effect?

OTOH, in early game the character felt really weak. Maybe the DEF curve could be adjusted to have a more shallow effect that starts slightly higher than now? I'm not quite at the end of the game so some things remain to be seen...

[Silvador]

Well, apparently CON affects defence as well.

That said, somewhere along the lines during the Keep, things did start to get a bit... steam rolly. The Wendigo and Bone Worm I fought several times, and really had to pay attention and dodge to get through the fights. The... Forest boss, not so much. From the Keep onward, I still played it smart with most of the normal enemies, but didn't care so much about getting hit now and again. And the bosses... pretty much all strategy went out the window as I just wailed on them, popping a couple of potions and a strength potion and just tanking the hits. Even the final boss I pretty much just ignored his attacks and whacked away with my sword and maxed shield spell.

Yeah, early on, the game is brutal with its enemies dealing huge (compared to the amount of health you have at the start) amounts of damage and lack of ability to heal between save and hub rooms. Late game, you find yourself taking hits and not really caring because compared to the amount of health you have, they don't deal a huge amount of damage and you're pretty much rolling in food and health potions.

I dare not think what Hard Mode is like, as more often than not I have a hard enough time with Normal in games, and Mortal Mode? Forget that. OHKO? No way. No how. Not for me, anyway.

[Bit Kid]

Thanks for the feedback! The balancing could definitely still use some fine tuning, so we will continue to improve it.

[werelobster]

I found the biggest dip in difficulity comes after the blacksmith. Just sell everything you can and buy armor. It makes enemies pretty easy to ignore. Even the bosses don't do enough contact damage to discourage just jumping into them for the I-frames so you don't have to worry about dodging and can just keep attacking. Then you start throwing healing potions into it and you could probably walk into the last couple bosses with more effective health than them.

[朱利安]

Originally posted by werelobster:

I found the biggest dip in difficulity comes after the blacksmith. Just sell everything you can and buy armor. It makes enemies pretty easy to ignore. Even the bosses don't do enough contact damage to discourage just jumping into them for the I-frames so you don't have to worry about dodging and can just keep attacking. Then you start throwing healing potions into it and you could probably walk into the last couple bosses with more effective health than them.

Just fought the worm boss. The first time I tried it I took 12 damage per hit. I went back to the blacksmith and spent all my money on armor. After this the worm did 1 damage and was a joke.

[Beefybeefybeef]

Having just played through the beta (which is great by the way!), I would agree with those here. Difficulty is quite well pitched to begin but becomes a bit too easy mid game, perhaps it's an oversupply of gold. It is also a bit easy to cheese bosses in the mid to late game with magic knife from across the screen. Perhaps this is overpowered.

[ikelarion]

The way attack and defense work in this game pretty much prevent meaningful itemization. Pile defense until enemies can't do more than 1 hp of dmg, then ignore everything they do and whack them till they keel over. This only happens because the defense is a flat rather than a % based reduction, all attacks deal preset damage (not something like 34-42) and enemies can't crit.
I like the game but on both playthroughs I found itemization lacking.
At this stage sweeping changes would not be possible but here is my 2 cents anyway -
1) Have two separate stats - defense and absorption. Defense would be % reduction, absorption wold be flat.
2) Give enemies quick attacks dealing low damage and slow attacks hitting for lots that you would want to avoid no matter how tanky you are.
3) Give certain enemies and attacks crit and more dots they can inflict.
4) Give the player bonuses to mobility and damage for not going too tanky. For instance, let dash cancel attack if you are below a certain threshold.

Unrelated bucket list -
1) Give item stat variations / item quality
2) Let us throw away / sell accessories please
3) Let some enemies drop learnable skills.
4) Let us know when certain items are capped.
5) Tell us if the Emerald Blade special works whenever equipped or you have to actually deal the killing blow with it.

[Silvador]

The problem with those alternatives is you risk turning this game into one of those "ultimate skill" games. Casual gamers would struggle and not find any fun in the game.

The combat as is is fine. It's simple but challenging, requiring strategy. Unless you actively farm and push for the highest possible max defense rating, you can still get killed in the areas you are up to if you get too reckless. If people want to go to the length of spending time and effort farming gold and/or bars to get the best possible armour, then they deserve to be able to tank the dmg delt to them.

This game has a rather sizable selection of armour already, each with different stats. If you're going to make a game that works against your efforts to improve your stats, why bother even having the selection to begin with? So far, more than half of the gear gainable is viable to end game, and this is a good thing. It allows the player the freedom to choose what they want to wear rather than be forced to pick "the best" only, which literally makes any of the other pieces of gear pointless.


Remember that this is a Metroidvania style game, not Destiny. Players shouldn't need to spend several hours grinding in order to progress and shouldn't be forced to find the best possible gear to succeed. Fighting enemies shouldn't be a chore, struggling to deal with numerous different types of attacks, defense ratings and other factors that come with AAA title games.


I was dealing 60 dmg with the Assassin Blade and my bird was dealing somewhere between 40-50 by the time I got to the end of the game. I had on the Traveler's Coat (which I have no idea where I got it from) and it's stats were actually better than any other armour I kept coming across, although not by a huge amount. I did not by any means do any kind of grinding (unless you count the forty or so minutes I spent killing the same two Kobolds in the mines, over and over (shortly after starting the Keep) in order to get the Venison.


The beginning of the game is only frustrating because enemies hit like a brick and you have next to no way to heal yourself between save points and hub rooms. Later on, the game still poses a notable threat, but only if you are reckless. Bosses and enemies can be tanked, yes, but it requires food and potions. Food is not easily found and potions cost money which can become quite costly, even if you choose to sell off every item you find. Yes, it's theoretically possible to buy an unlimited amount of potions by farming gold and bars (to craft into armour to sell), but that requires time. A lot of time. As I said above, if someone wants to dedicate that sort of time to gaining a particular advantage over the enemies and bosses in this game, then they deserve to have that advantage.


My only suggestion would be to make the "mini-bosses" attack you once they are attacked in order to prevent cheesing them from just out of range with one's magic dagger spell. However, considering the amount of time and effort already put into making this game, I wonder if perhaps that was done deliberately? The spells, especially leveled up, can be quite powerful and "cheesy" in and of themselves. And I'm thankful for being able to cheese the flying mini boss in the catacombs because if I wasn't able to cheese him, I'd probably still be stuck in the catacombs trying to defeat it in head-on combat. But, that is, once again, due to a lack of ability to heal between save points.

[menghao]

Early game is slightly harsh but I think that was the most enjoyable part as well. The end game with too good defense isn't really rewarding, even if I try to play it like a OHKO ironman character.

I see two approaches to rebalancing the endgame.

The trivial solution: Buff up the end-game enemies so that you need to min-max just to survive. It has the issues pointed out above by Silvador.

The complicated solution: Tear it all down and revamp to something else. Especially breaking off the ATK = damage relationship would be a natural point to introduce various controls. I'm not sure if this is feasible at this point in development.

[Silvador]

There is a third option, actually.

If people want a challenge bad enough, they can simply wear less defense heavy armour.


All in all, I'd say don't mess too much with this mechanic of the game. Not now, not this close to final release. I'd chalk it up to a lesson learned for next time.

This kind of balancing is only going to result in one thing, causing complaints. It's a slider. Move the slider in one direction and people on the other end will complain. Move it back, and the opposite side will complain. Put it in the middle and a few people from both sides will complain. Achieving a balance that pleases all simply cannot be achieved, especially in a week's time. This is one of those factors that you look at and go "this is how I/we want the design of the game to be, and that is how it is going to be".

A couple of minor tweaks, sure. But don't try overhauling the whole system, you'll just break what you've already made and end up annoying more people who already love it.

[ikelarion]

While you may be correct about there not being time for any major change, your position that "if people want challenge, they can gimp themselves in the game on purpose" is never correct. Challenge runs exist, but are only interesting for a tiny fration of the playerbase. People don't buy games to be designers and "reballance" the game - even if they did, they would only have the option to remove certain items from the game, not change their stats, which severy limits what players can even do to improve their experience.
The smallest change that can be done and would help a lot to make the endgame more engaging is to give 50% armor ignoring damage to all enemy extra-telegraphed attacks. Armor ignoring damage already exists in the form of environmental hazards, so it would not need any major rewrite I imagine. As it stands the endgame is a complete snooze with zero challenge and poor itemization options (no real way to go for glass cannon, things that raise your damage usually also raise your defense) where you have to grind the same enemy over and over again to fill up your bestiary (for the enemy item drops, displayed as ????? until you get them). There is no excitement about getting a drop - when the damn witch finally drops the ring after 200 kills where she repeatedly did 1 dmg per attack all you think is "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ finally" and move on without even checking its stats.
For a single casual run start to finish the game is an enjoyable experience - to "complete" it you have to turn all brain function off and do the same set of movements over and over again taking small chunks of damage from impotent enemies over and over again. The game does not need to be ballanced for the second kind of player, but but making some damage enemy attacks do penetrate armor will not affect the casual gamer with his weak gear while it will keep some parts of the competionist's brain operational while he wastes his life and youth grinding pixels.

[greg.mci]

this has been very much my experience wtih the game. most enemies were only doing 1-3 damage until I hit the final area where I took more but I had so much money that I had several potions.

what was weird though is the environmental damage had increased. like the black tar was doing 11 damage at one point it increased to 12. honestly the tar killed me more than the baddies given how easily you can get sucked in.

the real balance issue is the sub weapons. I maxed out the dagger spell and was steam rolling for a good chunk of the game. like the undead king boss I stood one side of the room, didn't move and just spammed the daggers. I think increasing the cost to 2 after upgrading might help offset this.