Lack of exploration motivation

[Anelyn]

Hey guys, I love the game concept and most aspects, but there's a real bummer for me right now - which is the exploration thrill / excitement of a dungeon crawler.

There needs to be a lot more interactible content / containers / traps - maybe even quests(?) to give you an incentive to explore the map (outside of hunting the baddies and completing the objective).

The tutorial missions were great, the lose panel hidding a switch that opens a hidden wall section, the robot box etc all was good.

Then I hit the office map layout and found out that outside of trash cans / occasional 1-2 security lockboxes, there is nothing lootable, absolutely nothing (the 5 credit chips are random, and it's a bit too stretchy to open 40 drawers in a map to get 10-15 credits and nothing else, I personally am not even bothering to check cabinets anymore).

During levels 1-5 I was stopping every new room to check all 6 directions (up and down as well hehe) to see if there is something hidden or that I can interact with, after that I gave up and am just speed running to find the objective and complete the mission (which is now what the game should be about - IMHO - the road to objective should be at least as interesting / challenging / fun as the objective itself).

Lack of loot. The training mission (under the bar) and the 2nd mission (space ship with robot chest) had decent stuff, you are guaranteed to find couple green items. After that? Nothing. Up to level 15 and I haven't found a single green item (full party of 4), very rare to get a white weapon / armor / shield on an entire map, rest is stuff from coffee machines / trash cans etc which you just vendor practically.

There simply needs to be more stuff on map since the shop is so poorly equipped and limited in offers - if you aren't lucky you will never get an uncommon for your team setup, you can't upgrade your desired crawler equipment and it feels bland.

Regarding combat - when you use an AoE taunt with 1 crawler and next to act is a hero with an AoE ability, it looks like it overrides the aoe taunt, as the mobs will focus fire the person who hit them last (soldier using the defensive that hits everything on screen, followed by my cyber ninja doing a dash hitting 5 guys, then the ninja takes all the pain).

Thanks for reading my post, looking forward to see the maps become more interesting to explore and offering better rewards!

[aerinyes]

The first two missions are campaign missions - they're actually built by a person.

Everything else so far is randomly generated. This is likely the cause of your frustration. Wit any luck, in the future randomly generated maps will have 'secrets' as well, hopefully ones that aren't...repetitive in the long run, though I'm not holding out a lot of hope for that - that is what hand made maps are for, after all.

They Cyber Ninja's Dash does 100% damage to all targets it hits.
The Soldier's 'Best Defense' skill does 120% damage divided amongst all targets. So if there is 5 targets, it does ~24% damage to any one target, and then generates 300% threat...which means it only generates about 75% as much threat as just shooting any one of them would, except spread out all over. It is not a taunt. The first skill in that tree -is- a taunt. Use that instead.

In a nutshell: Best defense is good at getting everyone a little annoyed at the Soldier. Them being annoyed at the soldier will not make them ignore a bigger attack.

[Anelyn]

Thanks, I understand the mechanics for Best Defense now :)

Regarding the procedural maps - it's same system in Darkest Dungeon (a very similar dungeon crawler with a team of 4 heroes), instead of walking like here through all places, you have fixed rooms and the actual movement is in the corridors (sidescrolling) that connect the rooms. Each corridor has several interactible items (be it traps, loot holders etc) as well as enemies.

My point was - having the free explore is all amazing but it needs a purpose outside of examining new textures - if you don't have anything to do outside of 2-3 containers in all map (doors auto open etc) there isn't really much point to exploring - there aren't breathtaking landscapes to stare at etc :)

I really hope the game will turn out to be more than just WASD to find the objective on the map while killing the random encounters on your way - it has great potential to be amazing!

[Terronidus]

I'm just gonna half-way hijack your post here. I have played and LOVED Grimrock. I actually haven't finished it because the dreaming, pits, and dark dungeon atmosphere creeped me out. I'ma scaredy cat. This reminds me of that, but in a sci-fi theme which is much more up my alley.

One thing I'm so far extremely dissatisfied by is the lack of artwork representing actual objects in-game (from videos I saw). It looks like it just has a tooltip artwork with a description box. In Grimrock it was all 3D, the swords & rocks you threw were actually in the background, each of your characters had different hands and they changed based on race. etc. Granted with the items, there weren't that many and they were usually game changers.

Now I know this is EA so there is room for improvement. I won't be buying it yet but I will be watching as it develops, and I know I'm not contributing that much to sales, but I did buy Grimrock for all of my friends.

@ Aerinyes - Well we know random generation includes lootable containers. If there's only 3-4 in every map, well that's not the random is it? Seems to me just the # of interactables needs to be upped. Some of them SHOULD be empty, some of them might contain rare stuff. That's the gamble vs time aspect. Secrets should also come later in a random environment not necessarily needing hints, but maybe randomly spawning rooms that are locked until you hit a key that's always the same, with both guaranteed to spawn in the same level (unless you can go back). Guaranteed treasure but at random, y'know? Those things. You wouldn't know the button and room had a connection unless you encountered them before either.

tl;dr lack of displayed artwork regarding items and characters. I do also second OP's opinion about random generation.

[CyberDown]

Well it feels like there is a great foundation for a game here. The core game is fun, and you can tell theres a lot of possiblity (hate that word refering to games btw).

It just seems like a very incomplete game with the core gameplay up and running solid, which, imo, is how id rather early access (well alpha) games to work, its very playable and fun.

They do need to work on enemy variety, loot, reward mechanics, new tilesets, ect, and im sure thats all comming.

Id love to see more bosses, perhaps the random enemy crawler, and more interesting things to fight against, perhaps rare mobs with items only found on them.

I would like to see a better intergration on class specific world interactions (like the robot communicating with security cameras and the engineer being able to disarm traps) as well as a more logical hacking system, just disabling some stuff...seems theres not much need to hack, and hacking itself, while seems like a great idea adding a new combat mechanic, seems so very basic.

Loot and rewards are the big thing missing right now. Very standard weapons and armor with nothing really special on them, even with the upgrade stats, i could be hunting for loot and gear...but everything i have now does the job just fine, and its often a pain figuring out if an item is actually an upgrade.

Other than that, i have cash piling up with no good use for it, so missions are more or less XP farming, which gets old.

In this games basic form....im playing more to unlock new abilities, and to enjoy the music and ambience the game offers,which is great....just needs stuff i want to find while in a dungeon, or mission, or whatever....beyond the progression.

Loot doesnt have that awesome "i need to have this" feel to it, usually its a mouse over across my characters and if the right numbers go green i equip, or i sell. Cash has no use. I dont see a reason to have more than 4 characters other than just to have them, and there are not any secret areas to hunt down, and if there were...what would i get out of it? Useless accessorys, some vendor trash, and some gear that is just going to be very slightly better than what i have?

I do think that perhaps some "Darkest Dungeon" style combat animations would go a long way, which would work with this games painted art, sort of a limited animation, comic book style couple of animations to show attacks and represent weapons i have perhaps, even if basic, would make combat a bit more clear as to whats happening rather than seeing numbers pop up near character names.

If they can figure out a great farming/reward mechanic, this is a game id farm the living daylights out of. Just missing that sort of endless loot mechanic

As much as i like the concept of a story in a game like that, its a lot of dev effort put towards something that will provide a layer of content for a few hours. Expanding on the loot and reward mechanics could provide hundreds of hours of content if done right, and there is a huge variety of tilesets, secrets, bosses, random encounters, and a reward mechanic that works past max level.

[Terronidus]

I really hope the dev's read these types of posts. Because I will be watching this game for sure. I'm excited for when it's fleshed out and nearing "complete" status, for lack of a better word.

[CyberDown]

Originally posted by Terronidus:

I really hope the dev's read these types of posts. Because I will be watching this game for sure. I'm excited for when it's fleshed out and nearing "complete" status, for lack of a better word.

Honestly the devs did the right thing releasing the game with the core gameplay fun and functional, with the endless random missions. Ill get my monies worth out of this game before the campaign is even released.

It just needs more everything right now

[Thunderflux]

I read all the feedback and I hear you! While I can't respond to every post, please believe I am taking note of everything, what's enjoyable and what's not. Our goal with EA is to get all the feedback on "I wish I could X" and "I really dislike having to Y".

We're a small team, but more everything is coming :)

[noartist]

Wrrr,i gave up after level 8,i have got good stuff do fighting but after all the game start be boring,
everytime the same mechanism find something or kill somebody and over and over the same.
I was expecting much much more from this game,the time will show in what the direction it will goes.For now i stop playing

[Kashregnar]

So far I have fun, although I'm looking forward for more interactions.
The first two missions (tutorial and the ship) are very promissing. Though the quality of random missions are not on the same level, there seem to be some new events now.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=413940575

I screwed it, though.

[Dogtown1]

there are some really good ideas in this thread
the random dungeons do need more traps, puzzles, and mob bosses
I really like the idea of running into a group of other crawler teams that maybe work for a rival faction and an interaction takes place giving the player a chance to avoid combat with them...
or kick their ass

[Kashregnar]

That'd be awesome. But the lack of a healer class could turn an enemy team quickly into a nightmare and make it impossible to achive the mission goal. What is - by thinking about it - not so bad and could occur from time to time.

[CyberDown]

Originally posted by Kashregnar:

That'd be awesome. But the lack of a healer class could turn an enemy team quickly into a nightmare and make it impossible to achive the mission goal. What is - by thinking about it - not so bad and could occur from time to time.

Well two things, first being the Force Psyker has an attack that adds a barrier to an ally, when maxed has a chance to barrier all characters....is more than enough to keep me above 90% health on normal mode doing hard missions.

Two, adding a healer means enemy damage needs to be increased greatly to make the healer even useful beyond the first couple runs as a new party. This would also mean the healer is now a requirement.

I wouldnt mind seeing something like the Cholormancer from Rift mechanic added to a new character however. Healer attacks the enemy, adds an effect that will return a small portion of damage done to the enemy to the attacker as health.

Originally posted by Dogtown1:

there are some really good ideas in this thread
the random dungeons do need more traps, puzzles, and mob bosses
I really like the idea of running into a group of other crawler teams that maybe work for a rival faction and an interaction takes place giving the player a chance to avoid combat with them...
or kick their ass

Yes i would LOVE for single crawlers and parties of rouge crawlers to appear in the dungeon. Perhaps thats because im really missing enemy skills, seems most enemies just do standard attacks to you, with a few that buff their buddies.

[Kashregnar]

But not every team has a force psyker as a member. Though I like them as well, the game has to work without as well.
I agree that damage done by the enemy would have to be increased if there is a healer class (or it should have a skilltree where it would have other support (or even damage) too

[Tchey]

I support these ideas about exploration, and also about having a team that works without havig a specific member.

[RogueFalcon]

For many years, roguelikes have used different class types as "difficulty" settings. For instance, it may be very easy to win with a cyberninja, but very difficult to win with only an engineer.