3 of the 5 Slug cat campaigns are just carry quests. ( aka a thread about Spearmaster)

[Honkiewithaboomstick]

Lets talk about MSC how did you feel about some of the campaigns? I loved them
But i found something really annoying about some of them and it honestly really soured my opinion of at least one of them.
in 3 of the five slugcat campaigns, which are all based around either movement or combat they require you to lug objects around that effectively hinder their new mechanics for a majority of their campaign and that's kind of bad game design. It drags down the fun of the campaign overall rather than adding an actual challenge.

I genuinely want to know whom came up with the pearl quest for spearmaster
"Spearmaster's special ability is he can make spears and can hold TWO spears at once, he has to sink them into multiple enemies for food (around 6 lizards a cycle or one/two vulture for full food, not bad) BUUUT lets make it so he has to only use one hand the entire campaign effectively making the fact that he can hold two spears completely useless" This just makes him a much worse hunter playthrough. I understand they all needed a "downside" to not just make the MSC broken mary sue characters but when your entire campaign is based around hindering the literally only special ability of your new character its not really fun game design.

"Artificer can blow herself up to double jump and has a focus on scav combat and aggressiveness but unlike hunter cant have a back spear. So Lets make her use 2 arms to carry a scav corpse across entire regions filled with scavs at all times so that when you do actually need to fight scavs, you wont have a spear" Lore wise its really cool on paper until you reach chimney canopy and lose your corpse pass or want to go somewhere that's not her intended route
Her not being able to swim is also nifty and funny when it first happens until you realize that locks you out of exploring a large number of screens in the map/entire regions.

They weren't huge issues that stopped me from completing the campaigns themselves but after playing through them all once I just feel like these characters could have been the best and are but were brought down in a sense by their negative gimmicks

It just feels so weird to have your character have special abilities and then have the game tell you "Oh you actually really cant use that ability to its full extent though you have to carry this thing, dont drop it or let it glitch through the floor okay?"

[Big Mistake]

With Rivulet it wasn't that bad because the thing you have to carry comes with a neat effect. I didn't mind this and thought it worked well enough in the frame of that campaign. Doubly so considering Riv is great at avoiding combat, you don't have to risk dropping the thing all that often.

With Arti I didn't really experience anything outside of the intended route, as I just wanted to finish as fast as possible for the expedition unlock. Thematically I enjoyed it a lot, and how it encourages you to consider the other route if only to make your life a little easier. That said, lugging around scavs got old fast. Every time I ended up losing my doorman I wanted to yank my hair out.

Spearmaster was just flat out not fun for me though. Was one of the most fun for me starting out. No time limit, scavs are their usual level of grumpy, and spearmaster's drawback of no mouth isn't a problem at all until the pearl shows up. I may well just be bad at the game, but I was dropping it down a pit or throwing it on accident a third of the time and eventually just gave up due to having to reset so much.

Like, the one silver lining is that you can follow a route that basically lets you skip carrying the pearl with passages which is how I still managed to finish it. Would have been more fun if the pearl just wasn't involved, and the gimmick entirely hinged on finding communications for lore. IMO just having hunter spawns and a tough route is enough. At the very least it should function like a vulture mask and not be throwable.

I get why they ended up designing multiple campaigns around carrying something, as there are relatively few mechanics in RW that can be used to challenge the player in a fair way. Downpour's certainly using all of them. But with how imprecise and clunky picking things up can be, and with how multiple scugs depend on using the grab button for other things I kinda wish at least Spearmaster went a different way.

[ivan866_z]

- first of, forcing players to carry ALL pearls to the very same location (LttM) was a terrible design decision right from the start
best option I can think of to mitigate that mistake of whoever made it is to manually copy your savedata, then use a Passage to arrive at the shelter right nearby the LttM, and repeat that for every single colored pearl (in case you really want to read them all by yourself), restoring your savedata after each pearl to save the Passage, and your time
- a much better solution would be to make a separate place for reading each pearl, for instance, a computer mounted inside walls (such as weird indicators in the Sky Islands region), and perhaps mark them with matching colors (a yellow terminal station only reads yellow pearls, and so on); that would not only make collecting pearls more fun, but also provoke exploration, without frustrating players for doing the same route again and again (basicly playing an hour of the game just to see a simple animation of LttM presenting you with 3 sentences of lore)

[Honkiewithaboomstick]

I actually didn't mind carrying the regular lore pearls back to moon in my stomach the time it takes certainly be mitigated with infinite passages or just clever use of vanilla passages, I actually liked going back and forth between regions on my pearl hunt it gave me a reason to explore and its really fun when you have a lot of modded regions and over 40 pearls to collect into a little swag pile. You really feel like an explorer and part of the world Pearl Lexicon though is a great mod that I would recommend if it ever gets ported if you hate going back and forth to moon though.

But ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ both artificer and spearmaster were some of the worst times I've had playing this game and I consider myself to be pretty good at this game.
By the end I just turned artificers karma off because after the cancer that was spearmaster I was done lmao

[RCMidas]

Ivan, I get that you want instant feedback from your games, but this is not one of those that will provide what you want. For the love of God, get over it. This sort of game is the kind of old school loop that requires you put in effort, time and time again, so you actually earn your reward.

Not everyone enjoys it, not everyone needs to. This is how it works. Everything is broken, including Moon. The world was not built for slugcats. You have to learn how to cope in a world that is not meant for you.

[ivan866_z]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

instant feedback...
get over it...
put in effort...
broken, including Moon...
world that is not meant for you

notice opening access to a new region (in exchange for carrying a pearl from Communications Array to LttM, for instance) would have been a much more glorious solution to the fact you mention, 'world was not built for slugcats'... game design was not built for Adult Swim Games will be a much more precise definition, man
those guys are good at pixel graphics, and creating physics-based creatures, but overall, the 'game' is a failure, and its revenue is 10 times lower than that of Ori, whilst being just twice cheaper during the development; it feels more like a tech demo

[Honkiewithaboomstick]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

Ivan, I get that you want instant feedback from your games, but this is not one of those that will provide what you want. For the love of God, get over it. This sort of game is the kind of old school loop that requires you put in effort, time and time again, so you actually earn your reward.

Not everyone enjoys it, not everyone needs to. This is how it works. Everything is broken, including Moon. The world was not built for slugcats. You have to learn how to cope in a world that is not meant for you.

Don't worry this is just the guy who shows up in Rain World threads on various websites to shill Ori super hard. He doesn't actually play the game but he goes on every discussion he can find about this game to talk about how Rain World is bad and Ori is better. He has a very specific butthurt way of typing you can instantly recognize him.

[RCMidas]

Ivan, we knew from before release that the developers had no game design background. The lead is an artist. Is the resultant game frustrating at certain points? Absolutely. Is that a bad thing? To you, apparently, yes. Comparing Rain World to Ori, however, is beneath you. They are two very different games. That is not comparing apples to oranges. That is comparing apples to petroleum.

[Big Mistake]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

Ivan, we knew from before release that the developers had no game design background. The lead is an artist. Is the resultant game frustrating at certain points? Absolutely. Is that a bad thing? To you, apparently, yes. Comparing Rain World to Ori, however, is beneath you. They are two very different games. That is not comparing apples to oranges. That is comparing apples to petroleum.

Since this thread already derailed, thanks again for that Spearmaster route btw. Saved me a massive amount of frustration just going for the cheesy route.

[RCMidas]

You're welcome.

[evilboygenius95]

At 1st, I also got frustrated with the Scav corpse thing, but then I noticed there seems to be an intended path early on which always has Scavs near the gate which is Garbage Wastes - Shaded Citadel - Waterfront Facility - The Leg - The Underhang - The Wall - 5P - Metropolis. And like, after the 3rd region, the karma gates are all 1, so there's no Scav cost there at all. With all 3 Echoes gathered, Artificer can now begin to open gate normally, so Scav isn't needed too much afterward.

[stealthXG]

I didn't have that problem with Arti. Just go find echoes and raise your karma, then you wouldn't have to drag a scav everywhere.

[Spirit]

every story is a carry quest (slugpubs)

[Special Thanks, You]

I didn't mind Artificer being a more linear experience, just go straight to Pebbles since you can't go to moon and from their it's the last area. Sometimes that's alright, especially for a campaign focused on combat over exploration. Rivulet's carry quest is pretty cool actually, as the whole point of the character is moving around a lot and the item you carry makes you jump higher and farther, it plays into how the character plays. But Spearmaster's quest is definitely flawed for what you said. Even worse is that most creatures die to two spears, which makes combat even worse for a combat focused character. It would be a lot better if he could just put the pearl back into his chest wound lol

[White Rider]

Originally posted by Special Thanks, You:

I didn't mind Artificer being a more linear experience, just go straight to Pebbles since you can't go to moon and from their it's the last area. Sometimes that's alright, especially for a campaign focused on combat over exploration. Rivulet's carry quest is pretty cool actually, as the whole point of the character is moving around a lot and the item you carry makes you jump higher and farther, it plays into how the character plays. But Spearmaster's quest is definitely flawed for what you said. Even worse is that most creatures die to two spears, which makes combat even worse for a combat focused character. It would be a lot better if he could just put the pearl back into his chest wound lol

I can sorta see the frustration, but I really don't think it's a big problem.
All the new scugs have superpowers compared to the original ones (other than Hunter). There's got to be something limiting and differentiating their gameplay.

As a small comparison between some of them;

Hunter - Can carry an extra spear on his back and is strong and fast.
Negatives - Time limit mode. Has to eat meat.
Has to carry a pearl AND a neuron around for a good chunk of the game.

Spearmaster - Can make and carry spears anywhere at no cost. Can hold both. Gets food as he kills which knocks out 2 birds with 1 stone.
Negatives - Has no mouth so can't store items, so if you want to carry something it HAS to be in your hand.
Has to carry a pearl for most of the game.

Arti - Strong and fast. Makes splody things. Can explosive boost. Can stun enemies with an explosion. Immune to explosions herself.
Negatives - Short breath so limited time in water. Scavs are angry. Karma heavily limited.
Has to carry scav bodies to most karma gates unless you visit most echoes.

Carrying stuff as a limiting factor was a thing even before Downpour, and even with Hunter's time limit it's easy enough to just drop the thing you're carrying for a moment so you can deal with whatever you are fighting, then pick it back up after. It's really not a big deal.

The others aren't on a time limit so it matters even less.

[BlackSunEmpire]

Originally posted by Honkiewithaboomstick:

Lets talk about MSC how did you feel about some of the campaigns? I loved them

But i found something really annoying about some of them and it honestly really soured my opinion of at least one of them. In 3 of the five slugcat campaigns, which are all based around either movement or combat they require you to lug objects around that effectively hinder their new mechanics for a majority of their campaign and that's kind of bad game design. It drags down the fun of the campaign overall rather than adding an actual challenge.

Originally posted by ivan866_z:

game design was not built for Adult Swim Games will be a much more precise definition, man. Those guys are good at pixel graphics, and creating physics-based creatures, but overall, the 'game' is a failure

I wouldnt say that Rain World is a failure at all.
Really difficult games almost never become mainstream.

Difficult games only become mainstream if you can somehow bypass, or mitigate the difficulty by leveling up your character, like in most Fromsoft games.

But I do agree that the level design in VideoCult games is pretty hit or miss.
Some people like RCMidas will glorify this inability to design levels in a cohesive way as:

Originally posted by RCMidas:

Ivan, I get that you want instant feedback from your games, but this is not one of those that will provide what you want. For the love of God, get over it. This sort of game is the kind of old school loop that requires you put in effort, time and time again, so you actually earn your reward.

but most of us know that its just bad level design.
And I say this as someone who loves metroidvania games.

Its like you said, they are brilliant at :

- music
- art design
- creating pixel art graphics
- coding complex creature AI

But their level and gamedesign is basically:

- creating a lot of pointless dead ends and level areas which serve no purpose other than to make the player get lost.

- creating a lot of inconsistencies :
> Which cliffs am I allowed to jump down without dying ?
> Why do certain screens have invisble offscreen walls ?
> Are the pearls key items ? Do I have to carry them around with me ?
> Why does Iggy pop up in every 2nd screen spamming holograms, when the game is all about free exploration without any form of handholding and minimalistic UI ?

> Whats the point of guiding the player to Moon, if Moon can not communicate with the player ?


There are just a lot of sidepath to explore in those maps where exploring them feels completely pointless, because they just loop back around to the main path and have nothing of interest in them. Many of those sidepath do not even have access to new areas and are therefore completely pointless ;)

Overall the game is a brilliant game, because of the artdesign, music, atmosphere and creature AI, the combat feels also pretty good, but the level design and some of the fetch quests are pretty hit or miss, I agree.

But to be fair, its their first game.