A Review of the Recent Update

[Brioche]

Some updates I like, and some I don't. By the way, I've defeated Frakir with the Cra'than class, just for the record. This update has caused balancing issues. I'll bring up the ones which I think cause problems and offer my own suggestions for how to make the game better.

The good:

👍 Increased gaps for later stages is great. Those moments where you're too big to fit through a gap are just frustrating and not fun or challenging to deal with. Some small areas could work, but allow us to build the syphos we want.

👍 Showing the zooids of each class is great. Now instead of having to go into the game, we can see the benefits each part grants our species.

👍 Allowing a zooid outside of our species is nice. Personally I stick within species to give myself more of a challenge, but for those who want this, it's here. I can finally try out the mine bubble combo which rekt me hard on the final boss the first time.

👍 Movers having less drag just makes sense. Being faster should be about specing into movement pieces. I like this as a player who likes speedy builds.

👍 Killing the dead boss by picking up the new zooid is great. It allows us to heal more effectively without having to destroy every part. Saves time for all of us.

The questionable:

🤔 Sizzler being random is something I'm not too sure about, nor am I too sure what it means. I don't really use it very often, but I feel this is only being done because people struggle with fighting Cra'thans. Cra'than is well balanced already, with lower DPS in favour of healing and control over enemies. The Sizzler should be consistent. If you run into a sizzler expecting to destroy the core of an enemy Cra'than and die from leeching, you ought to learn why that was a mistake, rather than complaining and resulting in an undeserved nerf. However whilst playing, I couldn't notice a difference with my Sizzlers so maybe I don't understand what this exactly means.

🤔Giving heads more mass and drag seems to be to counteract the movers being changed. Eh. This could make the start more tedious due to having less speed. I'd prefer making weapons heavier to give a disadvantage to players who stockpile lots of weapons without using mobility.

👎 Increasing the spike velocity is not a good idea. The spike is already overpowered as it is. We don't need more spike damage. Spikes already outrange claws and can hit and run leechers, and can serve as armour against other weapons. We don't need them to be buffed.

👎 Make spike have less drag. No. Advena is meant to have a disadvantage in speed, it's built into the way its movement functions. We do not need a class that can counter all three other classes. At the moment Buginis is its only harder matchup due to its weakness in speed that can be beaten by mines. This is a part of the class, don't remove it. If we're going to make spikes more powerful, they should really slow down the user to balance the increase in power.

[Patashu]

I agree, they should revert the spike changes. Advena can win streak with spikes and enemies with spikes are by far the most threatening to Cra'than and Beeforous players if they're only using "true parts only".

[Brioche]

Yes. I'm a true parts player. I've played each class enough to know the underlying philosophies behind how each one functions and I understand each matchup enough to realise how a match would go between 2 syphos of different species. Buginis was the best against Advena. Now Advena dominates everything else due to these ridiculous buffs it does not deserve. Here's some more suggestions:

Revert sizzler's "randomness", revert spikes, Buff Buginis's Flak somehow, either damage or range would be good, Reduce the energy use of pushers to make them more viable, and everything else is fine. Last update the game was balanced quite good, but the changes in Advena's spikes have thrown that out of whack.

[Dominas]

Thank you for thorough changelog review!

Sizzler didn't have a defined order in which it selected targets to stun (zooids in range). From tests it seemed that older/earlier grown zooids were prioritized. That wasn't our intention and we have changed logic to always select zooid to stun randomly. Maybe stunning closer zooids rather than randomly would be more tactical and would open up more possibilities for strategy?

Hunting down single headed/no movement Siphos felt tedious as they in some cases would move faster than Sipho with the same amount of zooids plus movement zooid. That was due to weird logic we had which was removed. Starting game gives 15 nutrition which is always enough for a mover + weapon of choice combo. We might have to highlight importance of movement zooids in the tutorial.

Idea behind reducing drag on Spikes was that it didn't feel intutive to grow smaller parts and get dragged down same as having huge Claws or a full bodied Flak. Spike's drag was reduced by 25%.

The "Increase spike velocity threshold for full damage" change may sound ambiguous - we have increased velocity that is required to deal full spike damage on contact. Full damage velocity threshold increased from 6 to 8, which is a 33% increase.

Overall speed of Siphos has increased, so we might need to take another look at Spike's balance. Thank you for drawing our attention to it!

I hope this explains some reasoning behind our changes. Let us know what you think.

[Patashu]

To be fair, I haven't played since the update. I burnt myself out of the game by trying everything I could think of in every combination.

At this point, I'm just waiting to see what other changes the game goes through before I play again, unless I develop the urge to.

[Brioche]

New update. I've beaten the game with Advena and Buginis now. Still yet to with Beefuorus and with Cra'than and Beefuorus it's mainly luck with the minions you get. It's all good if they haven't got spikes. However Beefuorus has a lot of trouble with the third boss.

[Patashu]

Can't Beefuoros just rush in and nom the tentacles nearish to the bases to completely annihilate the minion spawns in advance?

My Beefuoros runs don't struggle with the third boss at all. It's literally just Frakir's spike wielding friends and that's it. Assuming the right angle of attack, Beefy can kill Frakir most of the time, though he can sometimes mess up... That and I avoid basically all Advenas in Rakdun.

[Banished]

This game is alright, but I would like to see upgrades. Basically be able to move more DNA into a cell piece and allow me to give it the features we want (say we limit to 3 upgrades) say I could add 3 armor into a cell piece to make it really tough to break, or 1 armor, 1 speed, and 1 regeneration. This would allow for smaller creatures but much more hardy creatures.
Could max out a cells regeneration but if it's poisoned that's canceled out and makes it breakable Just something to consider.

Other stuff

I like seeing all the different items enemies have but I want some others, like acid shot, or a string sprayer to slow enemies. Looks forward to this game being finished, also ask steam for more achievements. Maybe upgrades to spikes for poison, and piercing to extra damage or hold the enemy. Also for a new cell parts something to attrach the enemies and allow them to get into closer range.

[Brioche]

Originally posted by Patashu:

Can't Beefuoros just rush in and nom the tentacles nearish to the bases to completely annihilate the minion spawns in advance?

My Beefuoros runs don't struggle with the third boss at all. It's literally just Frakir's spike wielding friends and that's it. Assuming the right angle of attack, Beefy can kill Frakir most of the time, though he can sometimes mess up... That and I avoid basically all Advenas in Rakdun.

Nope. Electric reks you hard and the leeches can expose your short range.

[Patashu]

@Banished

Upgrading in specialised ways needs to be handled very carefully. After all, regen would be broken, we got a structure that exists for the sole purpose of healing and its healing comes with a significant cooldown between heals. Likewise, some structure zooids exist for the purpose of higher durability such as Advena's, or have low durability as a defining drawback, such as Buginis.

Upgrades should probably just stack two of the same part on top of each other, adding 1.8x to the stats, but for 2x the cost... Why? Because being compact is a huge advantage, an enemy might not be able to hit you with all of his fire power, while you can tear through him with much more focused attacks that are potentially harder to get rid of despite being less cost efficient.

There is an obtainable utility that slows creatures down, the sludge mine thing.

Aside from that, as the developer answered in my suggestions thread, he doesn't want to do anything too game changing unless he is absolutely sure of it.

For now, I suggest ways to mix up the stage order of the game so that we don't encounter the species in the exact same order. Stuff like more species, more parts, more bosses, perhaps another difficulty level, etc. The general content works.

@PugMasseur

I redid DA PASS on Beefy boi. Just in case the update effects it, but it didn't. You can win 100% of the time. I know this because I kept dying to Frakir's friends and having to redo the pass on Beefy over and over again... Until I beat Frakir on Beefy, then I never wanted to play as Beefy again, but at that point, I could do everything else just fine, except for the Advenas in Rakdun.

Electricity aka sizzlers, doesn't wreck you -

1) Just attack in a spot where there are no sizzlers if it's a problem. His tentacles have leeches and sizzlers, but they're not that dense. They're dense enough that you have to either fight a leech or fight a sizzler, but you can avoid fighting both a leech and a sizzler.

2) If you do get sizzled, back away, let it wear off then engage again. If you get stuck or you're backing away too slowly, you don't have enough backwards facing jets. I had two, but I never got stuck so I didn't really need them... After all, he's stationary.

Leeches cannot expose you -

1) Their DPS is low and you have a shell. Sure they attack quickly, but you can chew through a tentacle in one hit if you have more than one claw. They're not going to have a chance to damage you before they're disabled by being cut off from his main body.

I prefer to fight a leech rather than a sizzler, but I usually destroy the leech before it can hurt me, the other leeches are out of range and since they are, the sizzlers, while annoying, don't help him hurt me at that point.

2) He's stationary, he cannot choose to fight you from a distance that is outside of your range and in his range. This advantage is fully negated.

3) They have an arc to their reach because they're flexible, but they can't reach fully around themselves. If their angle of attack is too sharp, they'll be unable to reach you. There is also a short delay between touching you and actually latching on and dealing damage.

The only hard part is you have to do it quickly, or else an ally will spawn and attack you from behind. He is otherwise very vulnerable and very easy.

Once you have disabled his tentacles, you can take your sweet time attacking his well guarded "core". It's harder, but now he can't spawn minions so it's not actually hard and he will never really damage you.

Overall, it's not as complex as I'm describing it to be. Just run up to his tentacles and bite them.

He's bottom tier, but he's not 'that' bottom tier.