improvements for the game :D

[Clapie Fr]

Hello.

I have a small improvement to suggest for the game: when we compare two items to see which is more beneficial, the game shouldn't take into account the slotted upgrades in the item. This way, only the base stats of the two items would be compared against each other. Sometimes I struggle to understand why a certain item gives a bonus to this or that when it's not listed, and then I'm almost facepalming and sighing before finally removing the slotted upgrades to see the actual upgrade. This is particularly annoying when you're doing multiple runs and checking the trader's inventory each time.

Personally, I'm at the point where if an item isn't yellow, I don't even bother looking. However, upgrading an item is almost always much better than buying a ready-made one.

This issue is especially recurrent when you want to compare two unique items to see if there's an improvement to our build based on their slightly different stats. Every time, you have to unslot everything.

Thanks! :D

[Clapie Fr]

Actually, I'm going to add what I'd like to see improved. When you have a weapon that becomes more powerful with the number of kills made with it, it would be nice if that was displayed in the buff line, along with the number of kills achieved with that weapon. And when you hover the mouse over it, you could see by how much it increases the weapon's damage, a bit like when you compare items or slotted upgrades.

Next, it's great that you added the boss health bar, but I remember that when I was fighting the stations, when I was a little off-screen I couldn't see the health anymore without getting closer again. It bothered me a bit not knowing if I was actually dealing damage or not.

Continuing in the same vein, I imagine I might not be the only one who could be considered an 'old' player. And so, in my capacity as an old player, my reflexes are no longer in their prime. So for the moment it's okay, I'm managing, but the Time stat is really annoying by speeding everything up. I'm at the point of planning my build to NOT take that damn awful upgrade that makes my games unmanageable for someone who doesn't have the reflexes of a sixteen-year-old. So it's all well and good, but if we could have an option, maybe in the menu, to disable the benefits of this upgrade which for me is a pure debuff, that would be great. I prefer to see my ship and the enemies move a bit slower, so I have time to react to dodge in one direction or another, rather than grumbling in front of my screen because with a thousand enemies around, it's a bit annoying to have to dodge everything when you don't have the reflexes for it.

[Clapie Fr]

Ah, I forgot this too: when you hover the cursor over an upgrade, it would be cool to see the total number of that upgrade stored in the stash, because I store most of them but I kind of forget how many I have. So if we could have something like 'Stash: X' in the tooltip, where X is the number in the stash, that would be cool. Same for uniques, that would be nice too. If you have ten of the same unique that you never use, it would be good to know without having to unstash them all.

[Clapie Fr]

By the way, that dev joke in the Abyss, going to fight the boss who, once dead, makes THIRTEEN copies of itself appear, all charging like crazy and firing huge nuclear blasts everywhere, is super funny. Really hilarious to face that, and with the same health as the base boss, huh. Compared to that, running into the final boss in the Abyss is a walk in the park. Frankly, we should get the reward multiplied by thirteen, even fourteen if you count the first phase of the boss, because right now it's almost sadistic to throw something like that at us. And we're not even rewarded for killing fourteen bosses in a row, whether in XP or loot, even though it's mega stressful and requires quite a bit of reflexes. I'm really glad I got rid of as much Time as possible from my build when I encounter them.

https://ibb.co/VptVpSk3
https://ibb.co/bg7QYYyd

[casid]

Hi, thank you for your suggestions.

Originally posted by Clapie Fr:

I have a small improvement to suggest for the game: when we compare two items to see which is more beneficial, the game shouldn't take into account the slotted upgrades in the item. This way, only the base stats of the two items would be compared against each other.

The system currently compares what would actually happen if you'd equip the item and shows exactly that difference. I think what you experienced is an equipped item, with e.g. 3 modifier slots that are filled with mod slots and another item with e.g. 1 modifier slot. Once you would equip the new item, 2 mods would become unusable and this is what's shown in the comparison. The mods are important to use for comparison, however. Imagine you have a Kinetic mod equipped and have a weapon equipped with kinetic damage and want to check if another weapon with electric damage would give you an upgrade. By comparing the base weapon stats it might, but once you equip it, the Kinetic mod wouldn't buff the new weapon electric damage and you end up with a downgrade. What you can do to compare is to preview-roll modifier slots onto the new item. Maybe we could have this somewhere as an option, to compare items based on max possible modifier slots.

Originally posted by Clapie Fr:

Actually, I'm going to add what I'd like to see improved. When you have a weapon that becomes more powerful with the number of kills made with it, it would be nice if that was displayed in the buff line, along with the number of kills achieved with that weapon.

I'm not sure if I understood correctly. But all weapons that give damage upgrades per destroyed enemy give this bonus for the current mission only and are reset afterwards.

Originally posted by Clapie Fr:

Next, it's great that you added the boss health bar, but I remember that when I was fighting the stations, when I was a little off-screen I couldn't see the health anymore without getting closer again. It bothered me a bit not knowing if I was actually dealing damage or not.

Thanks for the hint! I had a look and the treasures where not boss entities so far and thus didn't show the boss HP bar. I've implemented a fix that will be part of the next update.

Originally posted by Clapie Fr:

Continuing in the same vein, I imagine I might not be the only one who could be considered an 'old' player. And so, in my capacity as an old player, my reflexes are no longer in their prime. So for the moment it's okay, I'm managing, but the Time stat is really annoying by speeding everything up.

May I ask, what version are you playing with? Time used to speed up movement uncapped, but that was changed a few releases ago to max 2x the base movement speed and that would take about 100 Time to reach. My reflexes aren't as good anymore, too, but since that patch and with the recently much slower projectiles I thought movement felt quite good, even with Time stats. Also, it doesn't speed everything up, only things in a very close radius around the player.

Originally posted by Clapie Fr:

Same for uniques, that would be nice too. If you have ten of the same unique that you never use, it would be good to know without having to unstash them all.

Why do you unstash them all? There is a counter how many you have for each stack. You can open a stack to look through by right-clicking.

[Clapie Fr]

Thanks for replying! :)

So, to start with the first point, when comparing two unique items, for example, right now there are no additional stats shown, and when you're still a beginner, you don't understand why two unique items that are the same give completely different stats. I completely understand your point of view, and yes, indeed, it's useful. Could we then have a key combination, for example Ctrl+Alt, to have the comparison without taking into account the item slots? Because for two uniques, okay, it's a bit annoying, but for two yellow or blue items, it's really ultra-tedious to have to unslot the upgrades, and if you bother doing it at the beginning, when you run the Abyss you quickly give up.

For the second point, I was thinking about the unique Aetherbane (sorry if I misspell it). The more you kill with it, the more damage percentage it gains. So I'd like to know if, during an Abyss map, the damage increase is truly significant or not, and it's completely impossible as it is, since we don't have access to the page summarizing our ship's stats. So, having an icon in-game, like for the temporary Forge Boost and other buffs, could be nice. By hovering the mouse over it, you could see, for example, '+1300% dps = +6.7M dps'. You see what I mean? For me, this could indicate that when I hit the boss, if I see its health going down faster than usual, then it would mean I've passed a certain dps threshold, let's say the famous 6.7M dps. This way, I'll know that choosing upgrades or skills that make me exceed this threshold would allow me to have that base damage. I obviously understand that it's the goal of the game to always do more dps, but not knowing how much damage Aetherbane does at the end of a run is annoying.

Regarding the Time issue, let me explain: I play with Poki, with the multiplication of power-ups, and then I took the skills that make power-ups appear much more often. The end result is great, lots of power-ups everywhere, EXCEPT that the bad side of all this is that the attack speed and movement speed power-up... well, I have it permanently, actually. So it's cool to have attack speed, I won't deny that, but when your movement speed becomes unmanageable, thanks to this power-up + Time, it's incredibly annoying, especially in the Abyss where you find yourself overwhelmed by enemies and asteroids. For example, really, I can go around the circumference of the Abyss in about 10-11 seconds when I have this famous power-up. Now imagine when I have to dodge 600 asteroids and 400 enemies all clustering on me, with a completely unmanageable movement speed. I'm reduced to making very brief impulses on my direction keys because I'm constantly drifting. So yes, I could very well not take the skills for power-ups, as well as Poki's tree, to solve my problem, and I would have a ridiculous power-up attraction radius and they would be much less powerful. But in my opinion, it would be totally stupid to cut myself off from that, given how useful power-ups are for gaining experience, knowing that it becomes really long after a while to level up. I've barely passed Abyss 50, and I'm going to have to stagnate there for a while to reach level 80 myself to have enough skill points to spend. So, having a ship moving like a bar of soap all the time, in a map full of enemies, is frankly not very cool. If at least we could disable the gain of Time, even if it's very little, I think it would make a big difference when we're under the power-up that accelerates movement.

Finally, for the upgrade stack counter, it's mainly on the merchant interface, sorry if that wasn't clear. For example, I like to have a few skills ahead, in case I want to test a new build on a new character, so from time to time I buy upgrades, but for that, I have to remember how many of these famous upgrades I already have, and there are many. If, when you put your mouse over an upgrade at the merchant, you see 'Stash: 5' in the tooltip, well, cool, I won't buy any more. If I see 10, I'll go sell a few. If I only have 2, I buy it directly. This helps manage things a bit and avoid having dozens of the same skill in the stash after 50 hours of farming. AH! If I can suggest the following idea, the upgrade stash is extremely confusing, would it be possible to group them together? For example, a line dedicated to electricity, another to kinetic, another to Field, another to drones, another to parasites... etc. Because every time I think, wait, what does the one I want look like again? I'm not yet at the point of knowing the design of the upgrades by heart, so I hover my cursor over them until I say, oh yes! that's the one!

So there you have it, I hope I've been clear and precise enough this time and that I've made myself understood correctly! :D

[casid]

Hi, thank you for clarifying!

Originally posted by Clapie Fr:

Could we then have a key combination, for example Ctrl+Alt, to have the comparison without taking into account the item slots? Because for two uniques, okay, it's a bit annoying, but for two yellow or blue items, it's really ultra-tedious to have to unslot the upgrades, and if you bother doing it at the beginning, when you run the Abyss you quickly give up.

I spent some time on this today and started with a setting to compare items as if they had the same amount of modifier slots. I quickly noticed, that 10 out of 10 times players will want to have it compared like this. So, removed the setting again and made the new comparison the default. It will show in the diff how many +slots it assumed when it happens, so that it is transparent to the player what the diff is based on. When rolling modifier slots, or when actually grabbing and item and hovering over an equipped slot, it still used the current diff.

Originally posted by Clapie Fr:

For the second point, I was thinking about the unique Aetherbane (sorry if I misspell it). The more you kill with it, the more damage percentage it gains. So I'd like to know if, during an Abyss map, the damage increase is truly significant or not, and it's completely impossible as it is, since we don't have access to the page summarizing our ship's stats. So, having an icon in-game, like for the temporary Forge Boost and other buffs, could be nice. By hovering the mouse over it, you could see, for example, '+1300% dps = +6.7M dps'. You see what I mean? For me, this could indicate that when I hit the boss, if I see its health going down faster than usual, then it would mean I've passed a certain dps threshold, let's say the famous 6.7M dps. This way, I'll know that choosing upgrades or skills that make me exceed this threshold would allow me to have that base damage. I obviously understand that it's the goal of the game to always do more dps, but not knowing how much damage Aetherbane does at the end of a run is annoying.

I agree, that would indeed be very nice to have! However, I think having it as a tooltip within the game could be a bit stressful, as it distracts from focusing on the combat. I have an item in my backlog for quite some time: Mission Statistics after a mission was completed. It's not on the roadmap right now, unfortunately. But I think it would be the perfect place to add stuff like this.

Originally posted by Clapie Fr:

Regarding the Time issue, let me explain: I play with Poki, with the multiplication of power-ups, and then I took the skills that make power-ups appear much more often. The end result is great, lots of power-ups everywhere, EXCEPT that the bad side of all this is that the attack speed and movement speed power-up... well, I have it permanently, actually. So it's cool to have attack speed, I won't deny that, but when your movement speed becomes unmanageable, thanks to this power-up + Time, it's incredibly annoying, especially in the Abyss where you find yourself overwhelmed by enemies and asteroids. For example, really, I can go around the circumference of the Abyss in about 10-11 seconds when I have this famous power-up. Now imagine when I have to dodge 600 asteroids and 400 enemies all clustering on me, with a completely unmanageable movement speed. I'm reduced to making very brief impulses on my direction keys because I'm constantly drifting. So yes, I could very well not take the skills for power-ups, as well as Poki's tree, to solve my problem, and I would have a ridiculous power-up attraction radius and they would be much less powerful. But in my opinion, it would be totally stupid to cut myself off from that, given how useful power-ups are for gaining experience, knowing that it becomes really long after a while to level up. I've barely passed Abyss 50, and I'm going to have to stagnate there for a while to reach level 80 myself to have enough skill points to spend. So, having a ship moving like a bar of soap all the time, in a map full of enemies, is frankly not very cool. If at least we could disable the gain of Time, even if it's very little, I think it would make a big difference when we're under the power-up that accelerates movement.

Ah, thank you for clarifying. I have a Poki build as well and now that you say it here, the increased Power-Up movement speed indeed makes it harder to play. My suggestion would be to entirely remove movement speed from that Power-Up and only grant attack speed. Let's see if anybody misses the movement speed component of that Power-Up (I guess nobody will).

Originally posted by Clapie Fr:

Finally, for the upgrade stack counter, it's mainly on the merchant interface, sorry if that wasn't clear. For example, I like to have a few skills ahead, in case I want to test a new build on a new character, so from time to time I buy upgrades, but for that, I have to remember how many of these famous upgrades I already have, and there are many. If, when you put your mouse over an upgrade at the merchant, you see 'Stash: 5' in the tooltip, well, cool, I won't buy any more. If I see 10, I'll go sell a few. If I only have 2, I buy it directly. This helps manage things a bit and avoid having dozens of the same skill in the stash after 50 hours of farming. AH! If I can suggest the following idea, the upgrade stash is extremely confusing, would it be possible to group them together? For example, a line dedicated to electricity, another to kinetic, another to Field, another to drones, another to parasites... etc. Because every time I think, wait, what does the one I want look like again? I'm not yet at the point of knowing the design of the upgrades by heart, so I hover my cursor over them until I say, oh yes! that's the one!

If I remember correctly, there is a suggestion for being able to search within the stash on Discord. It's still in the backlog, but that would certainly be very helpful! This one will take a bit of time to implement though and is not on the immediate roadmap. Showing the amount of a specific item base that is already present in the stash for items on the ground / at Carlos inventory would be very helpful, too!

Thanks for the suggestions!

[Clapie Fr]

You're welcome!

The game is really enjoyable and addictive; it's genuinely fun to play in its current state even though it's not officially released yet! Frankly, the work done on it to offer it in early access without me noticing any annoying bugs like in any other early access is really great.

What's more, we have a whole chunk of the campaign, in addition to having endgame content with the Abyss.

Apart from a few points like the ones I mentioned that could be annoying in the long run, the game is already very good (I know, I'm repeating myself xD).

Honestly, I hope it continues on such good tracks for the future, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the next updates!

Good luck and thank you for offering such a great game :)

[casid]

Thank you so much for the heads-up!

Very happy you enjoy the game and I hope with feedback like yours to make it even better, step by step :)

[casid]

I've released a new version today that contains a few of your suggestions.

The improved item comparison is now live, as well as the HP bars for Kiki's Treasures.

Also, the Wings Power-Up now only grants attack speed. This should make especially Poki builds a lot more enjoyable.

Thank you for sharing!

[Clapie Fr]

Hi, I've got something new to report! :D

Poki's skill 'Plunder Strike' doesn't work on bosses. I hadn't paid attention before, but in the Abyss they're real HP sponges, and no power-ups appear throughout the entire fight.

Great job on the latest update for removing the movement speed from the attack speed buff; it's finally more playable in the Abyss :)

And yes, comparison is great now :D