This game is designed to be annoying

[galdon2004]

This is the best way I can sum up how I feel about this game. There's just so much about it that seems to be designed deliberately just to annoy the player.

Pilfers show up to steal your gold whenever you find it, and don't actually die, they just get "knocked away". So you never even get catharsis from hitting them to stop them from stealing from you.

Valuable items block you from walking through them, and can be destroyed by your pickaxe so when you open a chest, you often have to deal with an item blocking some of the gold that drops from it and trying to be careful not to accidentally destroy the item while trying to chase away pilfers.

Bosses have WAY to many hit points, making boss fights last far longer than the fun lasts.

Wall lanterns can be destroyed with a single hit, and make the room darker, but serve no actual purpose beyond one "puzzle" room which isn't even a puzzle because it has a sign in the room that spells out what you have to do.

The Black Rabbit rooms are not pilfer proof, so gambling on prizes there and getting an actual payout is soured by having to deal with pilfers spawning in and taking some of your prize.

Curses are always worse than any benefit you get from acquiring them, making most choices to take one or more curses in exchange for something basically equivalent to placing a valuable item behind an unbreakable wall to tease the player.

You get no real invulnerability time or chance to recover from being hit before you are vulnerable again, making it possible to be chain-hit without a chance to regain control over your character.

Not many of these are big things, (except taking player control away when hit and not letting them recover before becoming vulnerable again; that's a cardinal sin of design) but it's a lot of little annoyances. far too many to be accidental. It seems the devs have taken the wrong idea about how to oppose the player and are opposing the player's ability to have fun. Which is not a good design philosophy. There is definitely a good game underneath a lot of these annoyances, but after playing a while, it feels like it just isn't worth dealing with the endless annoynaces to get tastes of what potential the game has.

Since this is in early development, I hope some changes are made to either add more catharsis and payoff to the annoying mechanics or cut down on how much annoyance is relied upon, but as it is, it's like the game goes out of it's way to keep stopping me to say "No, no. Stop this isn't supposed to be a fun experience" at every turn, which makes it just not feel satisfying to keep playing.

[galdon2004]

The gecko's foot is not a solution to the pilfers. First of all, while the gecko's foot lets you grab gold at a distance, throwing your pickaxe causes you to stop walking for a moment, and you can only throw in 8 directions. If a pilfer is running from you and is in any position that isn't an exact line from one of those 8 directions, you *can't* hit it with a throw.

As well, while your pickaxe is thrown, you can't use melee attacks, so if you throw the pickaxe to pick up a line of gold in one direction, you're now unarmed if another pilfer comes around from another direction.

And really, the issue with the pilfers isn't that they steal your gold, but the fact that there is no payoff for them. It's a relentless annoyance that affects you in almost every single room of every single floor of the game, and never rewards you in any way for putting up with it. With frustrating mechanics you need to follow a pattern of buildup and climax. You can't just annoy players relentlessly and never reward them for putting up with it.

For all the mindless "Git gud!" posts, not one addresses the fact that the best you can hope to accomplish by "gitting gud" is to minimize your annoyance; never to fulfill catharsis or achieve a reward worthy of the frustration you endured and overcame. And they also ignore the fact that MOST complaints are of a quality of life nature, and would not negatively impact the difficulty of the game if properly fixed.

[gaarm987]

the othermine made me stop playing it was so bad

[Nantes]

Originally posted by galdon2004:

and you can only throw in 8 directions.

That's your own self-imposed limitation for using a controller to play. With the mouse, you can throw 360 degrees.

[Nantes]

A lot of people in this thread have a lot to learn from this video. Coincidentally, it just appeared in my recommended feed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P05ONfLOqmY

[ZT Xperimentor]

Originally posted by Nantes:

Originally posted by ZT Xperimentor:

Them and the forced gold drop on death are just there to stonewall any progress, rather have prices scaled up or gold drops reduced than constantly being robbed every time I play.

It really isn't nearly as bad as you (and many others in this thread) make it sound. Since I got the Gecko's Foot upgrade and can pick up gold with the pickaxe throw, the only time they really pilfer from me is if an explosion releases gold while I'm still busy dealing with enemies, otherwise it's a rare occurrence. I'd much rather have them steal their ~15 gold per floor on average than have increased prices.

Also, are you playing with mouse or the controller? The earlier helps a ton with aiming the pickaxe correctly to collect the gold and smack pilfers that do get a nugget.

Forgive me if I don't read the rest of you wall of text.

The gecko foot isn't really a good nor full solution; as I already pointed out the pilfers block your thrown pickaxe and as galdon2004 mentioned you're unarmed while the pick is in flight, so when a swarm show up from opening a chest it's guaranteed to loose a noticeable amount of gold, especially if you're lucky with popcorning. And yes the lack of catharsis is part of it, but I wouldn't pin the entirety of the problem on the lack either, partially because you also loose gold on death by default; they're forced detriments to gameplay progress, which in other gaming genres are known as padding. They function like a few other curses, except you can never be totally rid of them.

I've spent a few hours playing both ways, and the controls need some fine tuning but I'm glad that you can rebind them; keyboard has the 8 directional limited movement but the controller had similarly limited aim for throwing the pickaxe. Either way there's suppression of gameplay without tweaking controls outside the game, so I tend to go by keyboard since I benefit more from precision throws more often than precise movement.

Forgiven but noted your impatience for actually legible discussions.

[galdon2004]

Originally posted by Nantes:

Originally posted by galdon2004:

and you can only throw in 8 directions.

That's your own self-imposed limitation for using a controller to play. With the mouse, you can throw 360 degrees.

My controller has a joystick that can point in every direction, and even control the speed of each direction and exact angle of movement. But it picks one of the 8 directions for the pickaxe throws anyway. If anything, it sounds like precise throwing not working for controllers is a bug not a feature. You shouldn't be locked into one specific control scheme to be allowed to use basic controls properly.

And even if you can throw precisely, it doesn't solve the issue of many pilfers showing up and you losing control of your pickaxe for a few seconds at every throw. They will always get away with some of your gold if you get a decently sized payout.

Speaking of the thrown pickaxe, it's momentum is weird. if you jump it immediately rises up even on the outbound path. The only purpose this seems to have is to make your pickaxe miss it's target if you jump to dodge something while the axe is in flight. Since there is nothing to hit in the upper layer that doesn't get hit on the lower layer, this feature as well is purely negative with no positive impact.

[pressea]

gold drop on death looks really, really cool, and also subtly encourages you to use your gold during runs instead of trying to save every single gold piece for upgrades in the hub.

but mostly that first thing, the looking cool thing.

[galdon2004]

I don't think it's meant to encourage you to spend your gold during a run; the whole point is to get back to the hub with as much gold as you can so that you can buy upgrades. Buying things in the shop only affects that run in particular while upgrades affect every run from then forward. Unless you know the shop purchase will lead to you turning a profit, it's usually better to save your gold than it is to spend it to get deeper early on. Once you have all the upgrades, it sort of reverses; you can buy basically every item in every shop and never run out of gold.

[Archmoderator Ethan]

Keep at it. Get good. The salt will disappear and you'll become addicted to it. :-)

[BahamaLlama]

I have over 90 hours on the game, I'm already addicted too it. And NONE of what we have mentioned is a "get good" thing, they're just small annoyances that are making a great game annoying for no reason except to be annoying. If there was a payoff for them, then it would be fine.

Like the Pilfers, they are only there to take your gold. You get nothing from them, there's no bonus for stopping them, there's no reward at all. If a reward based thing got added (Like a random hidden room called the "Pilfer's Hideout" where you fight a mini-boss Pilfer to have a chance of getting 50% of the gold stolen back) then it would be fine. But, as they stand now, they're a great idea, but not really greatly implemented.

[Nantes]

Originally posted by Shortbolts:

Like the Pilfers, they are only there to take your gold. You get nothing from them, there's no bonus for stopping them

In 90 hours of game, I'm surprised you've obviously never encountered the golden pilfer, you must be the unluckiest player on Earth :) Maybe it exists to give back all the money the others stole and then some!

[galdon2004]

Originally posted by Nantes:

Originally posted by Shortbolts:

Like the Pilfers, they are only there to take your gold. You get nothing from them, there's no bonus for stopping them

In 90 hours of game, I'm surprised you've obviously never encountered the golden pilfer, you must be the unluckiest player on Earth :) Maybe it exists to give back all the money the others stole and then some!

Golden pilfer is not a payoff for pilfers in general. For one thing, you can't try to pick up the gold and thorium that it drops because you need to hit it repeatedly in a short period of time before it runs away. and as you chase it around, pilfers will pop up and steal away a huge chunk of it's drops. So you still experience being robbed of your rewards even while hitting it.

additionally, there is no thematic connection between the golden pilfer and *your* gold in particular. It's just a rare kind of pilfer that's shiny and shows up in otherwise normal rooms. If it instead appeared in a treasure room that explicitly painted it as a ring leader you might get some catharsis out of it, but as it is currently implemented you don't feel like you're "taking revenge" on those that robbed you. it's just a random mob that is similar to the other pilfers but hasn't actually been the one stealing from you.

Even more additionally; the golden pilfer is extremely rare, and a very minor event. It doesn't come *close* to matching the buildup that dealing with robbers in every single room of the game gives. A payoff to the pilfers needs to feel epic and rewarding. Not just a single pinata that shows up every few hundred rooms.

Maybe even have it be a full on boss. It might have made for a better golden core boss than the random salamander. Imagine getting to the bottom of the golden core to see a giant pilfer, and then from the edges of the room you see several pilfers carrying gold come in, toss the gold into the giant pilfer who reacts like it's growing more powerful, then as the small pilfers run off, you gain control of your character. Suddenly, you get all you need to know; this bugger is the reason why these pilfers keep stealing from you, and that's YOUR gold you need to beat out of it. You would retroactively feel like this confrontation has been building up since the beginning, and the fight between you and it is far more personal than the other fights. THAT would be some good catharsis.

[oi]

after twenty hours of game, understanding all its mechanics/blessings/ how to kill the bosses, i feel invincible...

[fractal9091]

Originally posted by galdon2004:

Maybe even have it be a full on boss. It might have made for a better golden core boss than the random salamander. Imagine getting to the bottom of the golden core to see a giant pilfer, and then from the edges of the room you see several pilfers carrying gold come in, toss the gold into the giant pilfer who reacts like it's growing more powerful, then as the small pilfers run off, you gain control of your character. Suddenly, you get all you need to know; this bugger is the reason why these pilfers keep stealing from you, and that's YOUR gold you need to beat out of it. You would retroactively feel like this confrontation has been building up since the beginning, and the fight between you and it is far more personal than the other fights. THAT would be some good catharsis.

Wow. Personally I don't care that much about the pilfers (I mean, they're really annoying, but I didn't really feel they needed more payoff), but having them be the final boss would be great! It would tie the whole game together.

[Shay0]

Personally i'm at a point where i have 5210255 gold so even if i lose 2% on a run i don't give a % about gold anymore i just run to shop straight and fight boss revenue is better than farming all the ore...