My main gripe with the game

[```skunk3```]

My main gripe with the game (right now) has got to be the XP/level scaling required for mods at higher levels. I am now at the point where I can pretty much consistently get past wave 200 without problems, and usually end up in the high 200's (~270-ish) when I die.

The problem is that upgrades become so much harder to come by due to the insane amount of XP required as time goes on. By the time you're in the 200's it feels like you hardly ever get upgrade mods anymore and are pretty much stuck with what you had before level 200... meanwhile the enemies get faster in general, more aggressive (ramming you) and can turn and focus on you much more quickly.

No matter what build I try I stall in the mid-200's. Prioritize defense and you can't take down enemies. Prioritize offense and you will get destroyed by 1 unlucky moment at higher levels.

I am fine with the difficulty ramping up as time goes on (and expect that), but upgrades shouldn't slow down to the point where they are almost non-existent anymore IMO.

I've been stuck under 2 million / wave 300 for so long now and it's kind of annoying reaching the same spot over and over where my build is stalled and can't do anything about it. I usually get killed on the wave where there's 3 of those fire snake things that shoot fireballs and they are moving super fast... seems like no matter what I do, they just lock and and ram into me and I die. Kinda lame.

[miamse]

a quick idea would be to make Cargo Trains length and frequency scale up with wave count

it's nice to get a random long train at the start of a run so that should still be a non nil probability, but seeing a tiny 3 segment long train on wave 200+ is never fun cause
you're gonna get basically no EXP out of it, and chances the sudden speed boost will make you mess up

[```skunk3```]

I just think that the entire XP / leveling curve needs to be adjusted, at least for higher levels but possibly overall. Adding more Cargo Trains will just litter the screen with more clutter, and unless those trains are REALLY long and frequent they aren't going to help that much. I feel like the overall difficulty curve of the game is a little wonky. For me it feels as though the game doesn't get even remotely challenging until at least round ~150 or so, with 200 being the obvious stumbling block that ends so many players' runs. However, after level 200 it's like the speed and aggression of all enemies doubles (or more) and DPS / survivability doesn't increase accordingly.

[Tripitaka (HUN)]

I am not THAT experienced in this game, but I do have a 1.5 mil score and I agree. I can understand the reasoning behind this, though, since if you were able to consistently get upgrades beyond level 200 you would be insanely OP with some builds. Hullbreaker being able stack defiance forever would lead to it being completely immune to damage, allowing construct based builds to get every good construct plus the best shots for overseer with all the nasty defense and a bunch of wild mods would be insanely broken.... And don't even get started with self damage resistance while charging a vortex the size of the map in seconds, while regenerating all of it easily. The game is simply not made to handle all of this.

From a player standpoint however, I, too, would massively enjoy the ability to become ever stronger as time goes on, as from wave 150, it becomes stale really fast, the first 150 are good because you are constantly changing and improving. I expect enemies 2.0 ( the next big update ) to shake this artificial difficulty up with creating massive and very difficult waves while letting go with the speed and frequency increase, which I find kind of lame. With the new enemy system there are endless possibilities, and we can let go of artificial difficulty, maybe also letting us get upgrades continuously.

[PappaFreud]

Originally posted by Tripitaka (HUN):

I am not THAT experienced in this game, but I do have a 1.5 mil score and I agree. I can understand the reasoning behind this, though, since if you were able to consistently get upgrades beyond level 200 you would be insanely OP with some builds. Hullbreaker being able stack defiance forever would lead to it being completely immune to damage, allowing construct based builds to get every good construct plus the best shots for overseer with all the nasty defense and a bunch of wild mods would be insanely broken.... And don't even get started with self damage resistance while charging a vortex the size of the map in seconds, while regenerating all of it easily. The game is simply not made to handle all of this.

From a player standpoint however, I, too, would massively enjoy the ability to become ever stronger as time goes on, as from wave 150, it becomes stale really fast, the first 150 are good because you are constantly changing and improving. I expect enemies 2.0 ( the next big update ) to shake this artificial difficulty up with creating massive and very difficult waves while letting go with the speed and frequency increase, which I find kind of lame. With the new enemy system there are endless possibilities, and we can let go of artificial difficulty, maybe also letting us get upgrades continuously.

To the best of my knowledge, self-damage resistance and all the defiance attributes have caps, so even if you could infinitely level, you wouldn't become completely OP.

I strongly agree with the sentiment in this thread. I'd prefer feeling rewarded for reaching more advanced waves rather than feeling my progression slow. It would be tough to do since the game is only balanced up until wave 100 (apparently) and there is a level cap (I think 60 but I am not 100% sure).

[Chimeric]

Originally posted by ```skunk3```:

I just think that the entire XP / leveling curve needs to be adjusted, at least for higher levels but possibly overall. Adding more Cargo Trains will just litter the screen with more clutter, and unless those trains are REALLY long and frequent they aren't going to help that much. I feel like the overall difficulty curve of the game is a little wonky. For me it feels as though the game doesn't get even remotely challenging until at least round ~150 or so, with 200 being the obvious stumbling block that ends so many players' runs. However, after level 200 it's like the speed and aggression of all enemies doubles (or more) and DPS / survivability doesn't increase accordingly.

I agree with this. So, the next update (beta starting soonish) completely removes the current waves you're used to and replaces them with procedurally generated ones. I'd love to hear feedback from everyone on whether the curve is better on the beta. It's likely going to require adjusting both the exp curve and the wave progression.

[```skunk3```]

Originally posted by Chimeric:

Originally posted by ```skunk3```:

I just think that the entire XP / leveling curve needs to be adjusted, at least for higher levels but possibly overall. Adding more Cargo Trains will just litter the screen with more clutter, and unless those trains are REALLY long and frequent they aren't going to help that much. I feel like the overall difficulty curve of the game is a little wonky. For me it feels as though the game doesn't get even remotely challenging until at least round ~150 or so, with 200 being the obvious stumbling block that ends so many players' runs. However, after level 200 it's like the speed and aggression of all enemies doubles (or more) and DPS / survivability doesn't increase accordingly.

I agree with this. So, the next update (beta starting soonish) completely removes the current waves you're used to and replaces them with procedurally generated ones. I'd love to hear feedback from everyone on whether the curve is better on the beta. It's likely going to require adjusting both the exp curve and the wave progression.

Very interested in seeing how this turns out. I have about 300 hours sunk into the game thus far and I do like it and think that it has great potential, but lately I've been getting jaded by the fact that no matter what I do I can't get past a certain point. I think my high score is around 1.81 million without any cheesy builds.

[Bill]

I could go for having it tuned for a bit less frequent upgrades in maybe the wave 1-50 range and a therefore a bit more frequently from 100-200 (I guess that'd mean you hit 100 with fewer levels)

[Bozobub]

Penalizing EARLY builds is very much not the way to go.

[```skunk3```]

So the other night I finally managed to score 2 million+. I've been trying for ages but had no luck. I used to often die at the level 200 boss fight but now that I know the game much better I rarely die there, and now it's not really that hard to hit levels in the very high 200's or even 300+ consistently.

However, and this goes back to my previous point, from level ~200 to level ~300 in this most recent run I think that I got MAYBE 3 mods from XP, and possibly 2. I can't remember for sure because I was focused on the game but by the time a player is past level 200 or so, their build is pretty much finished unless they are either super good or playing some cheeseball build that is hard to kill so they keep going on to rack up millions. I know that I am beating a dead horse here but the XP/leveling curve is WAY too exponential.

It's not even fun playing past level 200 because I know that my build is stalled and with every wave enemies get stronger in almost every way, and there's more and more of them, including mine waves where you are basically going to take damage no matter what due to shrapnel, and sometimes a lot.

To reiterate, I am not opposed to a challenge and I expect the game to get harder as time goes on, but there must be a way for a skilled player to be able to keep progressing without cheating. I don't know if the solution is to completely re-do the way levels are calculated or if we could give players a free mod at certain 'milestone' levels.. I dunno. All I know is that right now the game goes into "lol screw u" mode after level 200. I pretty much KNOW what approximate level / score I will die at before I even start a run, and I'm not a fan of that. Also, enemies start shooting projectiles while COMPLETELY off screen, which I gotta say is pretty bogus!

Very much looking forward to an update that fixes these issues and balances a lot of things in general.

[Bozobub]

Originally posted by ```skunk3```:

To reiterate, I am not opposed to a challenge and I expect the game to get harder as time goes on, but there must be a way for a skilled player to be able to keep progressing without cheating.

"Must be"? No, not really. Your opinion is valid but there is no "must" about it. Nor is your opinion universal.

Personally, I think the XP curve is pretty much spot-on, more or less. You are NOT supposed to be able to play forever, that simple. Furthermore, the XP curve *forces* the player to make impactful choices about their build, instead of expecting to be able to add most/all of the available mods.

You probably should refrain from judgement until after the upcoming update; wave progression is going to change a LOT.

[```skunk3```]

First of all, calm down fanboy.

Second, have you heard of rhetorical phrases?

I don't think the XP curve is spot on by any stretch, and even the dev admitted so above. If you only get maybe 2-3 total mods from levels 200-300, how is that 'spot on?' That's basically a brick wall. As I said, the XP curve is way too exponential so basically going into the level 200 fight you pretty much have to consider that the 'end of the game' (so to speak) and anything past that is 'bonus time' because you aren't really going to get much stronger (defensively or offensively) than you are already.

Nobody is talking about playing the game forever. Who says it shouldn't theoretically be able to play forever without cheating, and why? I am talking about making the XP curve more linear rather than exponential. People are still going to die at some point because of enemy power creep outscaling player power creep but they will be able to get further than now, and try out more interesting build ideas.

I have 300+ hours invested into this game (actual playtime, not idling with the game open) so it's not like I don't know what I am talking about here. I know a broken XP curve when I see one, and I gotta say that until the game is updated it almost feels pointless to play. Not pointless for newcomers, but for I fail to see how/why anyone who has hit the ~2 million point mark (without cheesy ramming builds) would have much incentive to keep playing aside from having bragging rights in a niche game.

[Engineer]

This thread is no longer constructive and has therefore been locked. I've also removed most of the off-topic discussions, but as a reminder to all users, please refrain from baiting or insulting each others on the Steam forums. Thank you for your understanding.