Good game, but kinda unnecessarily frustrating in ways...

[Killo Zapit]

I am a big fan of Ultima Underworld and roguelikes, expecialy Nethack. Barony delivers alot in that fusion I want in ways that other games *cough*Delver*cough* don't (though I give Delver credit for more interesting looking dungeons at least). I want the RPG elements, I want the character classes, I want the magic spells, I want the clever uses for items and all that. And yes, I do even want the often brutal diffaculty. Here's the thing though: Nethack and other traditional roguelikes can get away with a lot of stuff because it's turnbased and all the information of your surrundings is presented in an easy to parse way (once you get used to the shorthand or use graphical tiles anyway).

If you were to see a boulder coming barrowing down neer you in Nethack, you would think about it and calmly step out of the way. So even if you are just flat out killed if it hits you, it's not too fusterating to deal with. In Barony you have no idea where it is coming form or even if it is coming at all. If a super neer unkilliable enemy appears in Nethack, you think carefuly and calmly deside a course of action. If one appears in Barony it's nearly impossible to get away from it. Also on that point, who's bright idea was it to make to go at a near snail's pace if backing up? That's just dumb. The whole point of backing up is to gain some ground while keeping your eye on the enemy at the risk of not seeing where you are going. Sure maybe you shouldn't go as fast when going forward, but THAT slow? And the minotaur is basicly impossible to run from and just kinda instakills you. If it could only fit in rooms with a high ceiling and you could avoid it by being careful it would be one thing, but it busting through everything to get to you is not really that fun if you ask me.

And yeah, I know you can turn traps and the minotaur off at least, but I still like the basic ideas behind them, I just wish they wern't quite so over the top. I want some nice damanging but non lethal traps, and a ultra powerful threat I could possibly deal with. Also I have mixed feelings about the whole starvation thing too, but I still want to play with food turned on at least. I just wish maybe starvation would just weaken you or just damage you down to 1 hp or something so it wasn't a game ender. I guess that's the theme of this whole little useless thing I am writing. I don't mind being screwed over a bit, but I would prefer if these features wern't quite as over the top as they are.

Maybe my fellings about all this partly comes from me wanting soming closer to a roguelike verson of Ultima Underworld rather then a first person Nethack. I mean sure, I think some more of Ultima Underworld would improve the game in my eyes. There are a ton of features I miss form Ultima Underworld, like a conversation system, trading instead of/in addtion to shops, diffrent states of hostility being triggered by diffrent things, a combat system that involved holding an attack and releasing with the right timing, and so on. But I can respect those features absence in Barony, because Barony is clearly trying to be a more 'arcadey' type of dungeon crawler.

Well maybe except for the combat thing. Barony's combat just kinda ends up more that the player and the monster exchange hits till the one with the lower numbers dies. Ultima Underworld's combat was clunky, but at it's best it was like a dance of striking and backing off and looking for the best moment to strike while avoiding being hit. It dosn't feel like you can really avoid anything's melee strikes in Barony. I donno, maybe I should be trying to circle strafe instead of back off or it's just the fault of using a laptop rather then a real mouse and keyboard.

Though really, this is just one person's opinion. It isn't my game and dispite my possibly harsh language I am not sure if I would call the game 'flawed' or 'unballanced', I just have diffrent design sensibilities in mind when playing and that mish mash is a bit jarring sometimes I guess.

[Free Like GNU]

To Barony's defense, the possibility of getting trampled by a boulder is mitigated by proceeding carefully and examining your surroundings, there are ways to deal with the minotaur as well (but I wont spoil). This game also encourages multiplayer and a solo player is purposefully at a disadvantage, whereas Delver is a single-player experience. In combat you should take advantage of defensive items, ready your weapon for critical attack and tactical maneuvering (avoid frontal encounters).

[Killo Zapit]

The big problem with boulder traps is that they seem to trigger based only on being infront of the hole no matter how far away or what is in between you and it and there is no obvious tell on the floor. When you can actualy see the hole and know when it's coming it's not that hard to deal with, but there are a number of situations I also spend a lot of time running around in the dark to avoid monsters spotting me, but that's the risk I run and I know that. I just wish the risk was of a less "oops, instakilled now start over" nature. Often the only real tell I have that I have set one off is the sound and that dosn't really tell me what direction it is in most of the time. You know on that point, there seems to be a lot of sound ques in the game which seems like it might be a problem for deaf and hard of hearing players, but you can't really design a game to cater to every disability.

Anyway, maybe it's just me as a antisocial loser, but it seems to me that not ballancing a game like this for singleplayer first seems silly. Muliplayer seems like a fun thing to try, but I think the vast majority of players are not going to find three friends to play with. I have no idea how death in multiplayer works, but the only way I can see the instant death stuff working better in multiplayer is if you can just start a new character and play on the same world unless everyone is dead or if there is a ressurection mechanic. In which case, that drasticly changes the whole style of the game. I mean if the singleplayer had a way to continue on the same world and get your stuff back Dark Souls (or maybe closer to Minecraft) style, sudden death would make much more sense. But that's kind of breaking from the roguelike style.

As for the combat, I will say that one great thing about Barony in my opinion is it's steath mechanic and Nethack-style use of items and spells. It's much harder to effectivly throw potions and stuff at enemies, again mostly due to the switch from turnbased and overhead to realtime and first person, but the option is nice. I mean, if you will allow me to make the comparision, before Minecraft desded to revamp it's combat to do the same kind of timing based thing I was talking about (sometime I will have to try the new versions of Minecraft to see how well it worked, but I mostly only played with mods and so lagged a few versions behind) it was really even more of a wild weapon flailing then Barony. But that didn't mean fighting in Minecraft was compleatly unfun, because it gave you tons of options for how to approch combat. Probobly too much, since in Minecraft you could nagate pretty much every combat challage by playing with the enviroment, but that isn't a problem in Barony. Even so, combat in Barony reminds me a lot of combat in the older versons of Minecraft in that getting the drop on enemies and figuring out good ways of approching fighting is the real key to victory.

That dosn't change the fact that combat in Minecraft was (and probobly still is) one of it's weakest and ultimatly less important features. In Barony though it's kind of the whole point. Also Minecraft at least allowed you a bit better manuverablity and some knockback. At it's worse Barony can feel more like The Elder Scrolls: Arena's combat, with things appearing out of nowhere and beating on you without reacting much or really having much meaningful interaction. It seems to be trying to invoke Nethack's simple melee combat of things bumping into each other. But again, not to harp too much on this point (okay I lie, I am gonna play that harp till the strings get busted), it worked in Nethack because of it's turnbased nature and overhead perspective, not to mention that being on a grid meant you couldn't really get swarmed by more then a limited number of enemies.

And yeah, I am probobly just playing it wrong and not using sheilds or critical strikes enough, but it really feels like the best way to play Barony is to figure out how to line up a shot on an unsuspecting enemy and spamming spells or range attacks before it even reaches you and that once it does your just kinda screwed if you can't flail your weapon fast enough.

Also please don't tell me the way you deal with the minotaur is to shout Elbereth at in with chat. The whole Elbereth thing always annoyed me in Nethack. Partly because I always forget how to spell it, and partly because it seems like blatent metagaming cheatery.

[MrModeste]

First of all, I would like to say I enjoy to see well-explained criticism, and even though I don't necessarily agree with everything you said, at least it's easy to see things from your own perspective.

I haven't played neither Nethack nor Ultima Underworld, but from what I've seen from them in Google results, they seem to be much slower paced games. I think you're right when you say Barony is meant to be more "arcadey", and I think all gameplay elements are pretty well thought regarding that feeling.

The combat system is simple, but I think there are a few tricks that make it more than simple number-fighting: you can parry, you can kite, you can strafe (for incoming projectiles), you can do critical strikes, you can use stealth, you can debuff your enemies through potions and spells (from books, scrolls, or staves). Sometimes you're just not ready for a fight, and have to go on your merry way, hoping to get strong enough for the next encounter.

As for starvation, minotaur, and boulders, those are elements that I think were well thought out, even though I don't personally enjoy the latter too much. I think (from my own experience, and from what I've read from the developpers in Steam threads) that they are meant as pacing elements.

Hunger pushes you to move forward, and prevents you from exploring every single room of every single floor. Same goes for the Minotaur: once it appears, unless you're very strong, the first thing you want to do is find a trapdoor, and then you have to wonder how far away from the trapdoor you can stray to still be close enough to quickly leave the level once he arrives. Boulders have an important role as well: they act as a punisher for those who run around too quickly, not checking their corners in their haste to make the most of the limited time they have.

But maybe this is what you're not liking: having actual real-time as a resource, which wasn't the case in Nethack (and maybe in UU). In which case, you may want to disable the boulders, as they seem to be a little bit too unforgiving to my taste (until later on where you can take one in the face and not die). I still play without them, and I've already finished the game once. As said above, I think I understand and agree with the idea behind this concept, but sometimes I just want a less hardcore experience.

In the end, my opinion on the matter is that while I find the game to be lacking actual content, it has great mechanics that are pretty well balanced, (except maybe for the boulder), and if you give it a little time it may (or may not) grow on you.

Having a friend (even only one) over voice chat is highly recommended in my opinion. Not only do you resurrect when the other one reaches the next floor (with the items he/she generously decided to carry from your corpse :D), but it's quite a fun experience, getting to see one another do stupid thing, such as equipping an Amulet of Strangulation (I don't recommend equipping an Amulet of Strangulation, for obvious reasons that weren't obvious to me at the time..)

[Killo Zapit]

There is nothing wrong with trying to be arcadey or have simple combat, but I guess it's not so much that the combat in Barony feels 'simple' as it does 'underdeveloped'. I mean Doom's combat was simple, all you really did was point and shoot. But in Doom you were very agile and could run circles around most enemies and most of the game was really about dashing between projectiles and most of the action happened at range. Though heck, even melee weapons were pretty fun to use in Doom. You could get in close and back off when the enemy attacked and enemies would flinch in pain to give you time to get away or kill the enemy without too much damage when backed into a corner.

But that's not really what Barony seems to be going for. It's a much much slower more methodical game then Doom is. It's a game that tries to reward patience and cunning the way Nethack does. I would go as far as to say that Barony is basically the closest thing to a first person real time Nethack as can probably be expected for someone to make, right down to using some of the same text for some things. And honestly I appreciate the sentiment behind that. I really do. As much as I might be loudly playing my harp about how not everything in Nethack really works when directly translated to first person and/or real time, that someone tried and made it work as well as it does is remarkable.

Yet still I play my harp. The real question for me with the combat is, yes maybe you can do all those mentioned above, but is it really an effective strategy? Enemies don't really seem to do that much telegraphing of their attacks, you can't attack while blocking, and I have no idea how parring is supposed to work if you are implying you can parry with your weapons. The range of potions being thrown doesn't seem that great and it requires you to fiddle around with switching back to your weapon. Fiddling with your inventory for that one item that might save you in combat is a good way to get you killed and every second spent cleaning out your inventory is another second closer to starvation.

The way I see it, the solution to the problems I have with Barony's basic gameplay could be solved one of two ways. I could call them the 'Doom' way or the 'Ultima Underworld' way. The 'Doom' way is to streamline the interface at least a bit, make the player more agile, and make monsters weaker and able to flitch but more numerous, perhaps with bigger levels with more open space to fight in. The 'Ultima Underworld' way would be to make combat more complicated, have less monsters be immediately hostile without being provoked, have at least a few safe areas, and tone down the need to hurry the player along to the next level. I guess it could also be done in a 'Thief: The Dark Project' kind of way by making the sound propagate in a way that makes it a bit easier to see where everything is, make more stealth states, and make combat something the player is better off avoiding all together.

But really, I think the way it is now is pretty okay anyway, and I understand why some would think it is perfect the way it is. Heck I heard the engine is open sourced now? Maybe I should just fiddle with it a bit myself sometime and see if I come up with anything interesting.

[MrModeste]

I see where you're coming from, and maybe the game combat system doesn't work as well in FPS and Real Time as it did in Nethack (that I still haven't played). I don't have too much of a grip with it though.

I think it's more a matter of picking your fights well: you really don't have to kill everything you see in a level. Stealth can help: higher Perception level allows you to see better in the dark, and staying away from light sources, whether from the environment or your own, reduces your own visibility. You can also outrun pretty much everything except for spiders and Minotaurs.

As for parrying, my bad, I meant blocking. I don't think you can actually parry in this game.

[Killo Zapit]

Yeah, I find myself playing offten in a 'Thiefish' way, staying in the dark and carefuly choosing who and when I engage enemies, relying on sound ques a lot to figure out what is neerby. It's a pretty fun way of playing the game, but I think it suffers a bit from enemies seemingly not really having a 'searching phase' or making much of a sound when they spot you besides the music changing. Also it seems to me like the sound propagation is kinda off, and might not be blocked by walls. It might be better with headphones, I don't know.

I donno, I guess all I am saying is it just seems like things could be at least tweeked a bit to feel less blatently frusterating without tottaly getting rid of any of the game's features.

[Losername]

Awesome thread guys, I always appreciate well-constructed feedback and criticism. MrModeste pretty much took the words right out of my mouth as far as responses go -- though I have played a lot of Nethack personally, and trying to mesh that gameplay with real-time first-person dungeon crawling informed a lot of the decisions I made in the design years ago. That being said, Killo, I totally understand your complaints. This was my first "large" game, so getting all of the cues right and making it "fun" was technically very hard to do. I only ran into more and more problems as I began exposing the game to more players, so addressing everyone's problems evenly has become a bigger problem than I could have anticipated. That said, we're still fixing major problems with this game and adding new stuff all the time, and the next game I'm spearheading right now is far better in every way compared to this one, so I'll certainly be taking your ideas into consideration in the future. Thanks for sharing.

[Killo Zapit]

Don't take my comments to mean that I think game development is easy or that fixing some of the problems I have with Barony would be a walk in the park! I myself have dabbled in game development and programming and let me tell you it's an enormously frusterating experence just getting the basics up and running sometimes, expecialy when you are basicly doing it on your own. Even with an existing engine or doing it as a mod for an existing game it can be hard to do what you want. It dosn't help that I am often extreamly lazy and kinda sickly...

Anyway what I am saying is that I have enormous respect for you and whoever else worked on the game. There was a lot of care and dedecation put into Barony and it shows. My complaints are ultimately just silly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in an otherwise very solid game. I just thought that I would voice them in case there was a hypothetical 'Barony 2' in the works or for anyone who might be inspired to create another game like this. I myself have lots of ideas for one, but ideas are kinda cheap and meaningless without the skills to execute them, and those are skills I just don't think I have.

I have no idea if you plan on sticking to the first person roguelike thing or moving on to something else, but I kinda wish you did return to the genre someday. In a lot of ways Barony does kinda feel like a first attempt. Barony plays it pretty safe and sticks confortably in Nethack's shadowy embrace. And despite my little ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that's not a bad thing. Bold new ideas have their place, but most of the best games are just improving on the execution of what came before. Nethack it's self is a product of that very kind of iteration, not only through it decending from Hack and ultimately Rogue, but because it's been it's been around since 1987 and is still being updated and improved to this day.

But I also do think you need to get out of Nethack's shadow a bit and do your own thing too. Barony is what Barony is, and I do hope it gets developed and expanded more by you or the community, but I look forward to see what you will come up with next too!

[Losername]

FWIW we were not trying in the least to "play it safe" by "staying in Nethack's shadow" with our design. I legitimately thought it would be most fun to make a game that was way closer to an original roguelike than most modern "roguelikes" are. That was essentially the only driving force there.

Rest assured we are doing something quite bold and different, but in pretty much every way "better" than what Nethack and Barony are with our next game. I'd love to talk more about what our inspirations are going forward when we have something interesting to show :)

[mistersneak]

To back up what Sheridan said there, I've seen people say they love Barony precisely because it feels like the only real first-person, realtime roguelike. Regardless of what your definition of 'roguelike' might be, I think a lot of that affection for Barony comes from some of the ways it's stayed true to its inspiration. Bringing that genre into first-person and realtime comes with its share of odd matches and risks, but there's also nothing else like Barony.
We'd love to make more games that can't be described as an analog to another game and I hope Barony has demonstrated well that we are capable.

[Killo Zapit]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I absolutely agree on having Barony be closer to the orginal roguelikes in lots of ways. In fact, I can think of one way where Barony may have been better if it stuck to it's Nethackish roots, and that is item identification. It's probobly really a matter of balancing it right, but it seems a bit too easy to grind out the Appraise skill and make the whole item identification game moot. That said, at least it HAS an item idtentification system, which in my optinion is pretty much as much part of the heart and soul of a true roguelike as randomized levels and permadeath and yet is one of the first things to go to the chopping block when people want to 'update' the genre.

I still really like the idea of having a skill that helped you identify items over time though. I think I like Elona's approch to the idea of apprasing where you semi-randomly discover an aspect of unidentified items automaticly as you carry them around. You might find out if they are cursed or not before you figure out what they do or visa versa. But that's a more complex system and the way it works in Elona makes it often take much much longer to get any real useful information then just finding a identify scroll. Which is sort of the point, but still.

Anyway, as I have said, despite my little ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I too really love Barony for what it is quite a bit. And as much as I am kind of excited to see what ideas you guys come up with next, I admit I am also kind of nervous. Because it's also possible to go too far into the 'new and different' camp too. But I am sure you know that. Maybe I have talked a lot of smack before about how Barony stuck too close to Nethack, but as I said before it's not all a bad thing to have a strong foundation to build on.

Also, I have gotten much further in Barony since I first posted this, with traps and the minotaur turned off anyway. I suspected that Barony's challange and part of it's frusterating elements were mostly front ended, and it seems like that is the case to me. Granted that's probobly the case for most roguelikes and even RPGs. In later levels it seems like the biggest threat I face is my dwindling food supply, which is a bit annoying because it's a bit too RNG based if I find enough food to survive or not. I guess that might be like a bunch of roguelikes too though.