Are deaths meant to be this sudden?

[DiskOperatingSystem]

Hey all, so when I'm playing, even without any challenge modes on, deaths feel really sudden. Like, to the point that they sting every time I die. This might be a matter of my skill and being unable to get far past level 100, but I've noticed over my time playing that when theres a lot going on on-screen I don't have the time to look all the way down to my health and by the time I do, suddenly, out of nowhere, I'm dead. I could be fighting for my life, trying to manage everything going on, doing a good job threading the needle, think I'm close and then BAM. Game over. I've found that this leads to feeling like the deaths are both unexpected and random. I've played roguelites before and in others, I at least subconciously know how close I am to dying or I have time to look at my health. But in Nova Drift, I've found that I can never anticipate how close I am. I don't know if it's me, or if it's the game mechanics, but I feel as if the health bar is too far away from where most of the action takes place, leaving me to 1) forget my health status, 2) make risky maneuvers to save my skin, and 3) try to avoid deaths at all costs. I usually try to avoid death, but I just cannot seem to get my head around health status. Every single time I play, deaths feel like they sting because they feel like they occur at utterly random times. Often my reaction is "wtf where did that come from HOW DID I DIE." I can even anticipate how much DPS an enemy will give out but then, when I'm low, it feels like they did more DPS then usual. I just can't anticipate it. It's like, I take the normal damage and then suddenly, one tiny little tap takes me from full hull + half shields to death instantly. That tiny little tap killing me when the previous didn't is what gets me frustrated often. Again, it may just be my skill, but does anyone feel as if deaths feel random? Perhaps the slow restart speed which forces us to go back through 4 windows to start again should be instantenous instead so that we can get over failure quicker? Or better, even a warning sign or exclamation mark in the center of the screen would help me to see that I need to be careful or else, expect death. I've played around with different control schemes too ( I'm currently playing with the default binds that are designed to make you drift and shoot) and with any control method, deaths still feel random. Has anyone had a similar experience?

EDIT: To follow up, I tested this again in a few rounds and I've observed multiple times where I go from tiny tap doing damage to me + enemy and then the next accidental tap absolutely obliterating my nearly full health all the way down to zero. It's the tiny taps that get me consistently and it feels as if collision do not make sense. Does a low-velocity collision do a little DPS and a TON at the same time? Why do low velocity collisions feel worse than high velocity ones? There seems to be no consistency behind DPS, especially collision DPS. Is this meant to be like this or is this a possible bug?

[Bill]

Originally posted by DiskOperatingSystem:

Hey all, so when I'm playing, even without any challenge modes on, deaths feel really sudden.

They definitely can be. In my experience, having more health/shields is less about a perceivable amount of time you can be taking damage, and more about how bad a situation you can be in that won't kill you, and still leave enough reaction time to escape.

I feel as if the health bar is too far away from where most of the action takes place

Having other options for where the health bar is and how it displays is something that's been suggested a fair amount (in the suggestions channel of the Nova Drift Discord server) so hopefully something will come of it, eventually.

Often my reaction is "wtf where did that come from HOW DID I DIE."

I've noticed that a lot in videos of people playing, too. Some of it goes away with more experience about what's dangerous in the game and what isn't. Other times, it's genuinely things that are hard to notice, like a bullet that's near the end of its lifetime and has faded out to be very faint/tiny yet still does full damage, or whether you're in a blast radius or not, or when an enemy or asteroid has just spawned a fraction of a second before you go around the edge of the screen and smack into it. :(

I can even anticipate how much DPS an enemy will give out but then, when I'm low, it feels like they did more DPS then usual. I just can't anticipate it. It's like, I take the normal damage and then suddenly, one tiny little tap takes me from full hull + half shields to death instantly. That tiny little tap killing me when the previous didn't is what gets me frustrated often. [....]
EDIT: To follow up, I tested this again in a few rounds and I've observed multiple times where I go from tiny tap doing damage to me + enemy and then the next accidental tap absolutely obliterating my nearly full health all the way down to zero. It's the tiny taps that get me consistently and it feels as if collision do not make sense. Does a low-velocity collision do a little DPS and a TON at the same time? Why do low velocity collisions feel worse than high velocity ones? There seems to be no consistency behind DPS, especially collision DPS. Is this meant to be like this or is this a possible bug?

Are there any particular enemies or situations you can describe where it seems like that happens? (If you need to check what enemy is named what, you can find them on the Nova Drift wiki https://nova-drift.fandom.com/ )

As far as I know, the damage players take from collisions doesn't depend on speed at all, just what kind of enemy it is. The exception would be if you clip into the enemy or the enemy is chasing you down and you collide two or three times in a row (I believe there's a short limit to how fast it can happen, but it is quite short).

Or better, even a warning sign or exclamation mark in the center of the screen would help me to see that I need to be careful or else, expect death.

Well, there are warning signs at the screen edges when particularly nasty enemies and hazards like comets and singularities are about to spawn, and the shield/health bars flash a red glow with increasing intensity as they get below about half (though that has the same limitation about location on the screen).

[Nick]

i dont know what the community has named the enemies in this game, but the big pink/purple prickly boys that fire off bursts of 5 shots - they have decaying bullets that in my experience basically dont decay. you get hit by the end when they basically stop existing and take 20+ damage per shot, which means flying into a burst that is 99% opaque kills you and leads to a lot of "wtf?" moments. hammerhead delayed explosions do this as well - it looks like theyve faded but if you fly too close to them you take about 100 damage which kills most builds if the shields are down.

this game has A LOT of horrible ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in it since the new enemies 2.0 patch., and it really feels like the majority of the feedback on difficulty is coming from a handful of people that can hit the really high scores and everything else is "lol get good" and ignored.

[anarcher]

There should be "no new enemies" if all the difficulty levels are turned off, they're basically pushing away new players who struggle even with the old enemies. It's not good enough that they can play the legacy version when the vast majority of people trying a game out won't bother going into the steam betas menu.

[No One]

one of the benefits of the helix shield is making it very obvious when you take damage

I don't know about "meant to" but yes in most cases if you die in Nova Drift it's 100=>0 in a second or two.

I like that you can get killed by difficult-to-spot attacks. You can train better situational awareness on this game.
The other thing you can do is intentionally sit yourself somewhere it's easy to spot attacks. There's some depth and breadth there because it's not trivialized.

That said some sort of replay function would be good so it's a lot easier to figure out what you missed, rather than having to do something like trying to get all the enemies that were in the lethal wave alone and sitting there watching them like it's a nature documentary.

[anarcher]

>helix shield
Are you playing some *really* old version?

[No One]

since you don't point out it's called orbital now, I conclude not important to use the current name

[dholland]

There's no way to mitigate burn damage in the game, so it's incredibly easy to screenwrap into a lance and instant (or at least very quick) death. Pretty hard to train your peripheral vision to help but I suppose it might be possible.

The apotheosis super mod at least stops you crashing into enemies when you screenwrap, and lets you laugh at hammerheads, but it's quite a few non-damage upgrades to get.

IMO all the specialised shields are too weak to be useful in an average weapon build, with the possible exception of orbital as mentioned. Shockwave seems nice until you realise the long delay between pulses and low shield strength makes it worthless most of the time.

Too many roguelites are simplistically "balanced" by having a negative effect included with the positive one -- it's easy to do and overall balance can be ignored.

For newer players, I recommend playing with salvo and spectre and starting shield. At least you will get to craft a build and experience wave 200 before dying for no discernible reason :-) Yes, you will not gain the experience of trying to avoid enemies who can see you all the time. But, it's possible to transition to other ranged weapons, like dart, railgun and blade between waves 40 and 100.

I do think transitioning ought to refund any upgrade point used on anything other than starting gear. I've only reached wave 300 once, and I feel frustrated that the majority of weapons and ships are so punishing for me to even get to wave 200 with that it's not worth starting with any of them.

[anarcher]

If you refund weapon/gear swaps, it's basically free rerolls forever.

[dholland]

Your point? :-) Okay, then give more gear options so it doesn't take 40 levels to get the new gear. You want people to use more gear, make it easier to do.

[DJDiceZ]

That has always been one of my biggest issues, even before 2.0 enemies. Death comes out of nowhere, ends you in 0.1s before you can react, and usually feels pretty bad. It feels ineluctable. But most of it can be traced down to suboptimal upgrade choices.

That being said, i am salty, very salty. I've been trying to get a Mortar build and the past 3 runs i got it, i died within 1 second of getting the mod by some largescale explosion or lightning fast enemy rush. Game, ♥♥♥♥ YOU! /shortrant

[anonymous316]

I'm pretty interested in picking this game up but is it really that super difficult? If there is build flexibility I'm fine but if I feel like I need to follow a strict build guide to make decent progress then that's no go for me.

[anarcher]

That kinda depends on your definition of decent progress, which varies according to player skill and current version average meta. For me, getting to 2m score is decent, and any run that gets 1m/wave 200 is good enough.

[DJDiceZ]

Originally posted by anonymous316:

I'm pretty interested in picking this game up but is it really that super difficult? If there is build flexibility I'm fine but if I feel like I need to follow a strict build guide to make decent progress then that's no go for me.

Hard to answer because of how the game is designed.

It's fairly difficult, especially if you don't pick good upgrade combos.

That being said there's a lot of possible loadouts that are viable so i wouldn't worry too much in that regard. But if you expect to just randomly pick whatever you want and have it be good, you might be a bit disappointed unless you have a very good sense of optimization. There's flexibility, but not every build is good, there are clear synergies and antisynergies. At least you're not too reliant on rng.

Game is still fun in spite of the sudden nature of most deaths, and you have some options to reduce or increase difficulty to some extent (more so the latter).

Plus so far there's only an endless mode, so you HAVE to die at some point.

[anarcher]

Technically you can keep going forever until the game crashes. I tried in the debug mode, gave myself so many twin strikes that the screen was constant whiteout of shots that instantly removed anything appearing on the screen, and since it was blade weapon nothing could exist to even hit me. It kept going for hours until the game crashed.

[DJDiceZ]

Originally posted by anarcher:

Technically you can keep going forever until the game crashes. I tried in the debug mode, gave myself so many twin strikes that the screen was constant whiteout of shots that instantly removed anything appearing on the screen, and since it was blade weapon nothing could exist to even hit me. It kept going for hours until the game crashed.

Yeah, but theoretically, endless is "unwinnable"