Am I truly this incompetent or am I missing something

[Jaknet]

Hello

Long time fan of original T&E (I'm 54) and I'm having some serious problems with this and had quit playing before the most recent patch the other day due to unable to progress.

First off though, just to mention, while I like the Hat concept. not finding the hat until having cleared almost all of a level or finding it right next to the exit elevator... is a trifle "frustrating" to put it mildly.

Regards the difficulty, I seriously don't know if I need to "get good" or if I'm missing something.

Playing on normal and I can easily complete the random world with any main character and all 25 levels with no issue at all.

Going to Hard and before this recent patch I couldn't get beyond level 3 with any character without being killed. Starting the 2nd level and almost every single type of Human was outside the elevator just waiting for my character to step out, combined with being almost impossible to avoid being outrun and hit by 80% of the humans and their refusal to stop chasing made it a complete joke to even think about trying to shake any trees.

Having spent a while being killed repeatedly with every single char I simply gave up as the difference between random and hard felt insane for a single player.

With the news of the recent patch I tried again.... While there are slightly less humans I felt that having 10 Boogie men in sight at once on level 2 without even leaving the elevator was very off putting.... Still having tried all the main chars the best I can manage on hard is level 6 and 1 ship piece and the thought that if this is hard, then I haven't got any hope of ever reaching extreme, let alone surviving it to unlock endless mode.

Certain humans cannot be outrun and refuse to stop chasing.

I really used to enjoy this, but Random on normal is not much of a challenge while moving up to hard is an extreme jump in difficulty... and it's got to the point that there's no hope in getting anywhere in Hard so I'm losing interest in playing anymore.

So.... Am I missing something or am I just too incompetent to bother playing anymore?.... I cannot turn down from playing on normal as it won't unlock the next difficulty.

Edit... I seriously don't know how anyone playing solo has managed to unlock and play the endless mode

[Nap]

Hey Jaknet!

This is all completely understandable. It's very hard to strike a true balance with ToeJam & Earl. Some players breeze through the entire game in 20 minutes without opening presents, and some players have a hard time even reaching Funkotron.

So to start off with your Power Hat feedback, we definitely agree and we originally made measures to try and prevent the hat from spawning close to the Exit Elevator. While playtesting I found that I did enjoy finding a hat like 'Hat of Amping' or 'Hat of Mystery Presents' near the Elevator, which identified all my Mystery Presents (the ones with the question mark). This was useful for using presents on the next level. So we kept it spawning near the Exit as well.

There are also multiple spawn points for the hats on the levels. Levels can spawn with 0, 1, 2 or 3 hats on them. Sometimes you won't find any hats on a level, sometimes you find it right away. Many players feel the hat change was a big improvement from how it was previously where it was instantly granted to you.

Players definitely need to understand ALL the mechanics of the game for the harder difficulties, but a lot is also random and outside your control like which presents you find.

The best advice I can give is to search every level out to the best of your ability before moving to the next. Stock up on all the money you can and use it to identify presents so you know which ones you'd like to use in a pinch.

Sorry for the confusion in our latest update but we only adjusted the numbers of enemies in the Random/Fixed Worlds. Hard and Extreme have their own rulesets and haven't been touched in a while.

With Hard Mode your job is to navigate the high number of enemies by learning enemy movement patterns. In Extreme Mode you need to take those enemy movement patterns but also use EVERY mechanic in the game. All the Good Earthlings on the level, the presents, the HyperFunk Zone, the Rhythm Matching game, use it all!

The good news is that you only need to reach Level 10 of Extreme to unlock Endless. You can do this much easier if you ignore the Ship Pieces and just run to the nearest Elevator.

Good luck and feel free to follow up if you need anymore tips!

[Jaknet]

Thank you for the reply and sorry for the delay in replying.

From a game I really enjoyed and constantly kept restarting on "Game Over" it's now become a game I really cannot find any pleasure in playing any more.

I guess I am simply "Too Old / Too Incompetent" to cope with the vast increase in difficulty between Random and Hard.

There's no point in using a lower difficulty level as that doesn't count towards unlocking the next levels in a single player game

Originally posted by Nap:

While playtesting I found that I did enjoy finding a hat like 'Hat of Amping' or 'Hat of Mystery Presents' near the Elevator, which identified all my Mystery Presents (the ones with the question mark). This was useful for using presents on the next level. So we kept it spawning near the Exit as well.

There are also multiple spawn points for the hats on the levels. Levels can spawn with 0, 1, 2 or 3 hats on them. Sometimes you won't find any hats on a level, sometimes you find it right away. Many players feel the hat change was a big improvement from how it was previously where it was instantly granted to you.

This might well be a "fun" mechanic when you have multiple hats, but when you only have 2 hats (Sure Walking and Ninja...which I never saw activate despite multiple attempts) it's more of a disappointment and with the Random / Fixed being so straight forward to complete, it's no fun replaying them to get more hats, it's more like boring grinding.

Sorry to say, but I can see this is most probably going to be uninstalled and considered a wasted purchase / loss of money, still I could always dig out my PS1 and play the original I guess if that desperate.

Don't worry I'm not going to lower the game's rating by leaving any feedback as it's pretty obvious that I'm the problem not the game.

[Nap]

You only have to complete Hard Mode once to get to unlock Extreme and you only have to get to Level 10 of Extreme to unlock Endless.

But you don't have to unlock anything, if you're just playing the game casually and enjoying it you should get the unlocks as you play. Unlocks will make future runs easier, that's the main incentive of getting them.

The same hat can spawn multiple times on a level and you are rewarded with XP each time you pick one up.

If you're not having fun, then by all means stop playing. But the point of most roguelikes is to keep playing it until you master enemy movements, learn how to manipulate RNG to be more in your favor, and progress further into the game.

The game isn't supposed to be stressful. But for many players who enjoyed the difficulty of the first game the main modes are too easy, that's why we added the other ones.

Your memory of the first game may be confused with something else, ToeJam & Earl was never available on the PS1 and the first game is much harder than the Hard Mode in our game.

[Jaknet]

Ok sega instead of PS1 and I don't have one of them to dig out

Yeah i know it was hard, I only completed it solo a few times over the years I was playing it, but it was still enjoyable and felt like it was possible and I don't ever remember the insane amounts of mobs like 6 boogy men all outside the elevator on the 2nd or 3rd level.

I still feel that the jump in difficulty is too great between random and hard

But then you somehow claim to have people able to run all 25 levels to get all the ship parts without any presents in 20 mins, which means less than 45 seconds per level so that doesn't seem possible either especially with the walking speed....and that's not taking into account for the time taken in the elevator between each level.

Originally posted by Nap:

learn how to manipulate RNG to be more in your favor,

What do you mean? How does the player manipulate the RNG?.... just keep quitting until you get a good random start and hope. That's hardly player skill.

Still you've obviously got enough people that love this so it's pointless me saying anything else and it's not as if you're losing any sales as I've already paid for this.

[Jaknet]

Just to clarify that my main issue is the vast jump in difficulty from Random to Hard, plus the way that you suggest playing Extreme is to ignore the ship pieces and just run to each elevator, seems to indicate that you're aware of insane the difficulty is.... The whole point of T&E was to recover the ship pieces, not just "only clear 10 levels by ignoring the goal of the game"

I personally feel it would be less of a sudden brick wall if the difficulty wasn't such a sudden vast increase.... Random I can complete without any hassle then the very next difficulty I get constantly slaughtered within 3-5 levels every single time.

Originally posted by Nap:

the first game is much harder than the Hard Mode in our game.

I find this very hard to believe when not only is there more humans and more types of humans per level in the early levels of Hard than the original, but you've also added many extra humans of different types that never existed in the original game. Plus in the original game, you never had to remain still for a moment to shake trees or bushes.

Still that was just to clarify my point, still the fact that this is obviously what you think is best and it's your game so your choice.

But as a customer I still feel it's fair to give my view that the vast increase between random and hard is simply off-putting and removes any incentive to play the game any more.

[Nap]

Extreme World has a ruleset that is similar to the first game. Resources are extremely high in Random and Hard World. Hard World's difficulty is the increased amount of Earthlings. We aren't going to make any changes to Hard or Extreme as they have been individually balanced and are not the main mode.

Just like any roguelike you manipulate the RNG by using the resources you find to find better ones, if you find a Rhythm Matching or a HFZ use them to your best advantage. Hold good presents like Promotion until you find a Duplicate Present or a Backer Island to Amp it.

I'm sorry you feel like the difficulty increase is too high but this is the first I've heard about it so it doesn't seem like a change is needed.

[Jaknet]

Originally posted by Nap:

Hard or Extreme as they have been individually balanced and are not the main mode.

So the Main mode is to just play the Random and Fixed levels then and not to play the Hard and beyond?

Originally posted by Nap:

Extreme World has a ruleset that is similar to the first game. Resources are extremely high in Random and Hard World. Hard World's difficulty is the increased amount of Earthlings.

That's fascinating that is as I've just been playing the original game and it's a hell of a lot easier than even Hard, let alone Extreme (which I cannot test as cannot get past Hard) and there's a fraction of the humans on the earlier levels than you have here.

To start with you get 4 sets of hi-tops as Toejam, each char starts with 3 bucks by default so they can identify at least one present and the humans are so sparse, minimal and do not notice you anywhere near as soon or as far away as this version does.

The first few levels there were a few red devils, that do not spot you from across the screen, a set of bees and a dog in the ball... none of these spot you from all the way across the screen and chase you, hell I can almost walk casually between 3 very close (awake and moving) red devils without any hassle. On the 4th level I found the first cupid and the first shark.

Yet here the same red devils will spot you from almost all the way across the screen and keep chasing until you eventually manage to lose them.

Yet in this version you have almost all the entire range of humans on even the 2nd level... not just all the original humans but also all your added ones as well.... multiple boogymen outside the elevator, multiple lawnmovermen, multiple crazed dentists, Segway mall cop, the new social media humans, multiple moles etc.... all in the very first couple of levels

Seriously the difference between these is beyond night and day. The original does not have the insane mass of multiple versions of almost every human thrown at you on the earlier levels and most of the nasty humans don't even appear on their own, let alone in multiples, until you get higher in the levels. Walking around is so much easier as there's a fraction of the humans that you have here and it's possible to walk around without much hassle at all in the earlier levels and explore, instead of constantly having a screen with humans on it everywhere.

You claim the original game is harder than Hard mode here and you claim that people can complete the game in 20 mins using no presents, when actually playing both versions back to back shows this difficulty claim is completely untrue and I've yet to hear how you claim the 20 min to complete with no presents used at all is possible.

Seriously if you want to promote a game with far harder gameplay than the original, that's fine and nothing wrong with it, but please don't claim that this is easier on Hard Mode than the original when by simply playing the first few levels of the original shows this to be completely untrue and basically insulting to me by suggesting I cannot remember the original game.

I wasn't some 6 year old when playing this for the first time and looking back with rose tinted glasses on, I was in my mid 20's and I can well remember exactly what the game play was like and playing the original just now shows that it IS as I remember it.

Originally I wasn't that bothered by the issues, just wondering if I was missing something, but having been told that "Hard mode is easier than original" and "can complete in 20 mins without using presents" and simply dismissing my comments as untrue and basically saying "Get Good as this is easier than the original" has really annoyed the hell out of me as it's clearly not the case at all.

[Nap]

Hey Jaknet.

Hard Mode in our game is much easier than the original game, despite the aggro changes. The way enemies aggro you in Back in the Groove is more similar to TJE3 than it is the first game, but there are A LOT more ways to break aggro in BitG than in TJE1.

The world record speedrun for Hard Mode is 16 minutes for Hard and 25 mins for Extreme. We ran a contest a while back for fans to beat Hard Mode without using presents and multiple players completed it.

Despite the name our players felt Hard Mode wasn't hard at all and that's why we added Extreme.

[Jaknet]

Originally posted by Nap:

Hey Jaknet.

Hard Mode in our game is much easier than the original game, despite the aggro changes. The way enemies aggro you in Back in the Groove is more similar to TJE3 than it is the first game, but there are A LOT more ways to break aggro in BitG than in TJE1.

Well having played both back to back, I cannot agree in the slightest.

BITG on Hard and mass amounts of hard mobs (30+) on every level from 2 upwards.

TJ&E Fraction of the amount of mobs and easier mobs (less than 10) per level on the same 5-6 levels

Never played the other TJ&E games just the first.

Still despite the facts of the density and difficulty of the mobs is so completely different and harder on here than the original (under 10 low level mobs compared to 30+ high level mobs), it's obvious that you refuse to agree and continue to somehow believe that it's so much easier than the original.

Even if I wasted my time and recorded the first 4 levels of each side by side to clearly demonstrate the extreme difference in the amount of mobs and the ease of the original it clear that you would still refuse to see this despite actual game play experience.

I give up completely. Sick of wasting my time.

[Nap]

Hey Jaknet!

Just to make sure we didn't accidentally make unintended changes I double checked and I was able to complete Hard World today without using any presents.

I also ran our discussion by the community on our Discord and many of them agree Back in the Groove is much easier than the first game.

Extreme World does not have more Earthlings than Hard World, it has a completely different ruleset that is more like the first game. The Hard World having more Earthlings doesn't make it more difficult than the first game, the amount of resources and aggro breaks makes BitG very easy.

Sorry we can't seem to agree on this.