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I really like the boss in FTL. It's designed to test ALL of your ship's capabilities and defenses. I agree that you are pretty much destined to fail the first time if you don't know what to expect though, and that's not too cool.
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Apr 10, 2014 18:44
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Pladdicus posted:I think FTL is a lot less chaotic and rng based then people like to admit. There's a lot of ways to mitigate risk and still be able to win by the end of the run, there's so many decisions an possibilities it feels chaotic, but I think it's still quite controllable. Actually, that there aren't enough options or choices is the real problem. You basically blind draw event cards for your way through sector, sometimes you'll pull 1 or 2 less depending on the layout. There's an optimal way to fire your guns based on setup and what kind of enemy you're fighting rarely change this. You have to decide pretty early what you want to commit your scrap to if you want to have a chance to kill the flagship and then you're at the stores mercy. The events and tedious micromanagement are also annoying the gently caress out of me, especially when you get rolling and 75% of the battles are just fodder. It's not fun or challenging playing some lovely mini-sims just to heal up my crew and repair all the systems. Having a wiki page opens just so I can ctrl-f whatever event I just found isn't fun either. A mod that fully healed and repaired the ship on safe FTL jumps and changed the event text to just spell out what will happen would make it way more playable.
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Apr 10, 2014 18:46
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Klaus Kinski posted:The events and tedious micromanagement are also annoying the gently caress out of me, especially when you get rolling and 75% of the battles are just fodder. It's not fun or challenging playing some lovely mini-sims just to heal up my crew and repair all the systems. Having a wiki page opens just so I can ctrl-f whatever event I just found isn't fun either. A mod that fully healed and repaired the ship on safe FTL jumps and changed the event text to just spell out what will happen would make it way more playable. How is learning outcomes of FTL events different from learning what various enemies/encounters can do in Crawl/ADOM/whatever? 
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Apr 10, 2014 18:51
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Also I only played FTL once, on easy, and I won. Was I correct in retiring at that point?
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Apr 10, 2014 18:53
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omeg posted:I really like the boss in FTL. It's designed to test ALL of your ship's capabilities and defenses. I agree that you are pretty much destined to fail the first time if you don't know what to expect though, and that's not too cool. I think that might be the problem with the flagship, that it tests ALL of your ship's capabilities. Including the ones you don't have. You can get through the entire game specializing in beams or drones or boarding or cloaking, but to beat the flagship you HAVE to be well-rounded. I kinda lost interest in the game after I realized that, because I don't want to have to track down a cloaking device or teleporters every single game just to have a chance.
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Apr 10, 2014 18:54
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omeg posted:How is learning outcomes of FTL events different from learning what various enemies/encounters can do in Crawl/ADOM/whatever? Because many of them are pure rng based and the outcome is impossible to predict based on the information you're given. In crawl you can ctrl-X (or V?) enemies and get an almost complete rundown of their abilities and resistances.
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Apr 10, 2014 18:58
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Zombie Samurai posted:I think that might be the problem with the flagship, that it tests ALL of your ship's capabilities. Including the ones you don't have. You can get through the entire game specializing in beams or drones or boarding or cloaking, but to beat the flagship you HAVE to be well-rounded. I kinda lost interest in the game after I realized that, because I don't want to have to track down a cloaking device or teleporters every single game just to have a chance. But you can beat the flagship without cloak or teleporter or four shields or whatever. You need another strengths though: maybe superior firepower, maybe great defenses, and now in AE hacking is really powerful. It's true though that you pretty much need to plan for that final fight from the start. And it's now significantly harder thanks to additional systems, it probably could use a slight nerf. Klaus Kinski posted:Because many of them are pure rng based and the outcome is impossible to predict based on the information you're given. In crawl you can ctrl-X (or V?) enemies and get an almost complete rundown of their abilities and resistances. That's true. In FTL if I run into an event that I know can kill my crew or screw me badly, I usually just run away (that's almost always an option). They could add some more clues as to what can happen so you don't need to just try every option to learn.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:06
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omeg posted:But you can beat the flagship without cloak or teleporter or four shields or whatever. You need another strengths though: maybe superior firepower, maybe great defenses, and now in AE hacking is really powerful. It's true though that you pretty much need to plan for that final fight from the start. And it's now significantly harder thanks to additional systems, it probably could use a slight nerf. It strikes me that just having a boss at the end is an underdeveloped idea. It doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any bosses at all, it's just that a game as original and interesting as FTL is deserves a better idea for an endgame. For example, a lot of roguelikes have some kind of boss monster that hounds you when you grab the MacGuffin. Maybe you're outfitted to just take him out, maybe you can kite him to death, maybe you just run like poo poo and burn consumables on the way to the surface, but there are options. In FTL, it's just a really hard ship with a single arbitrary configuration. I feel that nerfing isn't really going to fix that. I mean, what if the final boss was a bounty hunter, who was following you everywhere you went, and picking up the stuff you didn't buy, fighting the battles you were running from? And in the end, you went up against a ship made out of all those lost opportunities? You'd at least have some indirect control over how that last battle played out. It'd also have some unpredictability to it, which would necessitate some more development of endgame balance, instead of being a static credits superguardian that you always have to have in the back of your mind.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:16
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omeg posted:I really like the boss in FTL. It's designed to test ALL of your ship's capabilities and defenses. This was the single biggest criticism I had of the game when I played it pre-release. You can specialize and mess with different play styles adapting to what you get throughout the run... until you get to the boss. At which point it's all irrelevant because if you don't meet these X, Y and Z requirements you will fail. The fact I'm reading these same criticisms 2 years later and after an expansion means that the devs have decided to stick with that (bad in my opinion) design decision. If you like that about the game, then fine I guess, but just like it was in beta, it's a valid criticism of the game. Don't get me wrong, there is so much to like about FTL. The soundtrack is amazing, I constantly listen to it despite not playing it anymore. The pixel art is absolutely stunning, the events are sort of charming and combat is engrossing. It could just be orders of magnitudes better if it had different win conditions. Without those other win conditions I personally see no reason to ever go back to the game after beating it. I dug up a post from almost two years ago when I was playing the beta heavily, sound familiar? (I think it was about the RNG) Xik posted:Your argument would only be valid if there were multiple ways to win, but there isn't. You need X amount of weapon penetration and decent shield/cloak to even have a chance at defeating the rebel flagship. What good is 8 crew members when you can only do 2 damage at a time, what good is having multiple high end weapons when you have no scrap to upgrade your power systems?
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Apr 10, 2014 19:19
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omeg posted:But you can beat the flagship without cloak or teleporter or four shields or whatever. You need another strengths though: maybe superior firepower, maybe great defenses, and now in AE hacking is really powerful. It's true though that you pretty much need to plan for that final fight from the start. And it's now significantly harder thanks to additional systems, it probably could use a slight nerf. I've had 4 shields and maxed evasion and lost to the flagship more than once because a drone in the phase 2 power surge obliterated the wrong room. Even planning for the final fight doesn't guarantee victory unless you're picking up the specific counters to its many attacks. I dunno man, I have 33 hours in FTL and I've never beaten the flagship. I've tried specializing, I've tried generalizing, I've followed the accepted strategies (kill all but one of the crew, knock out the weapons in specific order, etc) and something always goes wrong. I might just suck at the game, but I think it's weird I can get to the flagship 9 times out of 10 but never beat it. EDIT: Dude above me says it better than I ever could.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:20
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I want more time to play  After I unlock all the new ships I'll see how high of a win rate I can achieve playing exclusively random ship every time (on normal, noting the final ship layouts).
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Apr 10, 2014 19:27
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I don't know how everyone has so much trouble with the flagship, I've only lost to it a few times and every time I did I knew full well that I had hosed up earlier and was going to have a hard time. Really the only requirement for beating it is that you have some way of getting through its shields, whether it be with firepower or boarding or drones or whatever. Hell, one time I beat it without shields.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:30
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I played a metric shitton of Dungeon Crawl and I've only won once and the win took me 2 years. Now, let's disregard the fact that I suck at roguelikes, more specifically I suck at recognizing threats properly. Even though I managed to get gently caress-all anywhere in Crawl I was still compelled to play it because every time I died I knew exactly what did I do wrong. And after some time I managed to hit the sweet spot and won with a wizard. Whenever I play FTL and lose to the flagship I can't really figure out how to deal with it better safe for being lucky on the store items and events. And it always deters me from playing so all in all I didn't play it much at all.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:39
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Similar reason still keep me with Dungeon Crawl and keep me from FTL. In FTL the only thing I lose to now is the flagship. These deaths teach me nothing and are quite stupid, compared to DC:SS where I die to different things in different places and the deaths, in most cases, are quite indicative about what have I hosed up this time.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:44
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Forget the flagship, the poo poo that pisses me off in FTL is stuff like jumping into a system, surprise it's a solar flare system with a high-level drone ship in it and the drone's first salvo / the flares magically targeted your engines! Sure, in theory you get the scanner upgrade and then stay the gently caress away from hazard systems, just like in theory you have the weapons to deal with drone ships or the systems stamina and spare crew to deal with keeping your ship operational while you try to run. But the above scenario happened just often enough that I couldn't conclude it was one of those "gnome with a wand of death" types of situations. That is, what should be a one-in-a-million game is more like one-in-a-few-hundred. For what it's worth, my first win on FTL was a pure weapons build; I just missiled down the flagship's weapons systems and then stuck to beaming away its shields. Never got a cloaking device or teleporter on that run; instead I had a crapton of ammo, good weapons, and heavily-upgraded engines/shields. That doesn't mean the final boss is a good idea, but at least you know it's coming (after your first attempt that reaches it and inevitably dies, anyway).
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Apr 10, 2014 19:48
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You know what game makes me love getting screwed by the RNG? IVAN. Well, CLIVAN more specifically. I'd say about 50-75% of deaths are unfair, but they're generally hilarious enough that I don't mind at all. Favorite death is still when I lost both of my legs to the first boss and the gods refused to give me new legs. Luckily, I had a ring of polymorph, so I'd just wait until I could change forms and run a little further to the next city. Then I started starving. Luckily, I'd contracted leprosy and my arm fell off, so I ate it. I eventually made it to the second city and got my next quest. Unfortunately, I polymorphed into a fungus a couple of times in a row in the next dungeon and was stuck not moving long enough that I started starving to death. I prayed to Scabies in desperation and she granted me a mistress to comfort me during my end times. From what I've seen of FTL, it doesn't have the type of charm to make an unfair RNG bearable. Worse yet is Rogue's Tale, where unwinnable situations are expected and you have no tools to even try to get out of it. And you can't get banana peel legs. I keep trying it and every time I feel worse about the 5 bucks I spent on it. It may be the worst roguelike I've played ugh.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:03
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IVAN doesn't really count. You're not being screwed by the RNG, you're being screwed by the game being designed to screw you at every turn.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:08
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If you play any form of IVAN you're basically inviting yourself to fail since it's less a game and more an experience in the futility of life which will flash before your eyes the second that wand of teleportation in your pocket snaps in two and severs your head by teleporting it off your body.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:10
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It's not Iter Vehemens Ad Necem for nothing.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:16
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dis astranagant posted:IVAN doesn't really count. You're not being screwed by the RNG, you're being screwed by the game being designed to screw you at every turn.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:18
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One of the first times I got to the giant plant boss in IVAN, I was horribly undergeared. It bit both my legs off, so I zapped it with the one wand I had, acid rain. The acid splashed on me and melted my arms, but after a few turns, the plant boss died to its burns. I laid there, a triumphant torso. Then my puppy moved to eat the plant corpse, and bumped me into a puddle of acid. IVAN is the best.
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Apr 10, 2014 21:46
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Chiming in late on the FTL discussion, but I feel that a lot (not all) of the criticisms come from ppl who are just bad at the game. Not unspoilered, just bad. Sorry. I've not played the expo yet as I'm experiencing technical difficulties with my OS, but on non-challenge ships I was doing something like 80% winrates on normal. Boredom is the worst enemy... RNG fuckwittage: Only really applies to challenge ships during the first sector or two, ie boarders v AI ships, lack of missile drops/shops for the Rock ship, etc. Other than that, it's a roguelike's standard "this encounter went poorly, you lost resources, get over it". Boss: Is a complete pushover for boarders, or alternatively requires a "Good, well-rounded ship" which is trivial on easy. Examples thereof: 4 shields and evasion. 3 shields and cloaking. Cloaking and Evasion. [AND] Either good anti-boarder stuff, anti-missile drone, or a bomb, ANY bomb. [AND] Guns, lots of. Or a bomb and mediocre guns. This is incredibly flexible. You should only really die to the boss the first one/two times and not knowing wtf is going on. I personally like that there's a boss at the end rather than a gauntlet run or whatnot. The game's based around single combat encounters, and it's an appropriately epic ending to it. The only real 'strategy' in the game is to wander about killing stuff with the tools you have, then circling back for the shop when you have cash in bank and buying things that complement your setup. So in other words, common sense...
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Apr 11, 2014 00:49
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For whatever reason I've just never been able to get into FTL, but DCSS hits the sweet spot for me as far as difficulty goes. I'm pretty sure that with perfect play every game is winnable, it's just that a) most people aren't capable of playing perfectly for even most of their game and b) the people who are aren't capable of playing perfectly all the time. We're all human after all. I haven't played since .11 or .12 but I was able to pretty consistently get to Zot, and I was far from a great player. I find Spelunky is kind of like that, albeit those also depend on reflexes and general platforming ability. You watch runs by guys like Psychedelic Eyeball and you just stare in awe. It all looks great when you watch someone who is great doing it. The trick is doing it yourself. Those two games are the pinnacle for me of what difficulty should be for a real rl and for a hybrid rl respectively.
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Apr 11, 2014 03:43
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Crawl might have the biggest and most active development team out of any roguelike ever so that might have something to do with it. Early on the difficulty was pretty awful, and the game was unplayable at some points.
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Apr 11, 2014 04:13
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Working on UI layouts for the PC.
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Apr 11, 2014 04:41
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Zombie Samurai posted:I've had 4 shields and maxed evasion and lost to the flagship more than once because a drone in the phase 2 power surge obliterated the wrong room. Even planning for the final fight doesn't guarantee victory unless you're picking up the specific counters to its many attacks. Sorry, but you're bad at the game. 
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Apr 11, 2014 04:55
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Jordan7hm posted:I'm pretty sure that with perfect play every game is winnable Starting as an elf wizard I started in a room with one door, opened it to find it blocked by a hobgoblin. I then miscast my only spell 3 times in a row and it hit me with a club and killed me in two shots without me ever seeing a single item or weapon.
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Apr 11, 2014 05:24
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cock hero flux posted:Starting as an elf wizard I started in a room with one door, opened it to find it blocked by a hobgoblin. I then miscast my only spell 3 times in a row and it hit me with a club and killed me in two shots without me ever seeing a single item or weapon. Wizards don't count jerk. god
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Apr 11, 2014 05:30
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Amusingly, back when I still played Crawl wizards were the best class for consistent starts because the toolbox of Blink + Summon Animals + that gas-based confusion spell was vastly more reliable for keeping you alive than playing a bump-attack class and hoping the dice came up in your favor.
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Apr 11, 2014 05:34
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cock hero flux posted:Starting as an elf wizard I started in a room with one door, opened it to find it blocked by a hobgoblin. I then miscast my only spell 3 times in a row and it hit me with a club and killed me in two shots without me ever seeing a single item or weapon. It's not quite perfect, but if the best example you have is on D:1 on a character you've poured all of ten seconds into, you've still got to give them credit for being closer than 99% of other roguelikes. (A jackal pack in the only hallway out of your starting room will usually kill a character who has no weapon.) I imagine the devs are a lot less worried about such cases, since there's really no loss on your part outside of metagame stuff like streaking. (Still a bummer if it was a streak....)
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Apr 11, 2014 05:38
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Miscasting seems to be what fucks me more often than not. I can run a big dumb minotaur with a mace pretty far reliably but whenever I play a magic class some spell I have a 10% miscast rate on will miscast 3-4 times in a row when I'm in trouble and that'll be that. Also I'm still kind of irritated about a time when I had managed to get really far as a wizard and blocked off a hallway with a wall of fire to slow down a group of enemies and then teleported and landed directly in the fire and was killed immediately.
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Apr 11, 2014 05:43
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MeramJert posted:Sorry, but you're bad at the game. Yeah, I'm starting to think that's the case. I'll let people who can actually beat the drat thing argue the point.
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Apr 11, 2014 05:43
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Crawl does have some unavoidable deaths, but by and large they're on the first floor. Which means you lost what, a minute or three? FTL's bullshit continues for the whole game up to the end where it culminates in that boss. They aren't that comparable.
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Apr 11, 2014 05:47
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Serephina posted:Chiming in late on the FTL discussion, but I feel that a lot (not all) of the criticisms come from ppl who are just bad at the game. Not unspoilered, just bad. Sorry. I've not played the expo yet as I'm experiencing technical difficulties with my OS, but on non-challenge ships I was doing something like 80% winrates on normal. Boredom is the worst enemy... Other roguelikes are fun to get better at, but FTL isn't. I think that's what people are exploring here: so much of it is good, what in the heck is keeping it from being as compelling as other roguelikes for some people? I think the answer to that question has been pretty well explored up to here, but just want to clarify, I personally don't have a problem with how hard it is.
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Apr 11, 2014 05:56
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The thing that's no fun about FTL, to me, is the time commitment when compared with the level of choice. The battles take forever and early on you have very little impact on how they go (beyond basic strategy, what to shoot at and how to time it), and then you hope you get lucky with scrap, shops, and events. Even once your ship is kitted out most fights go exactly the same way, up until the final battle which doesn't make sense in the context of the game. I'd like the game far more if there was bump combat or an auto resolve so at least I could either die or get to the meat of the game as quickly as possible.
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Apr 11, 2014 06:15
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Tollymain posted:Crawl does have some unavoidable deaths, but by and large they're on the first floor. Which means you lost what, a minute or three? FTL's bullshit continues for the whole game up to the end where it culminates in that boss. They aren't that comparable. Well actually I've had unavoidable deaths later in the game as well. Like the time I stepped into an invisible teleport trap and landed in a room with 5 orc priests who immediately use smite on me and did more unblockable/unresistable damage than I had max hp. Or the time an eye paralyzed me on the same turn I spotted it and then while I was paralyzed an ogre spawned and killed me without me ever being able to move. Or the time I went down a flight of stairs and was immediately paralyzed by an orc sorcerer and then murdered by 4 knights and a troll. Or the time a hobgoblin had a loving dagger of distortion and immediately abyssed me with it. Really a lot of the time it involves me being paralyzed on the same turn that I spot the thing that can paralyze me. Edit: And honestly other than the flagship and random 6 mantis boarding parties on zoltan/engi ships I don't think I've ever had a completely unavoidable death in FTL. Like you're forced to fight the flagship but everything else you can run from if you survive for more than a minute. Having your engines destroyed doesn't even reset the charge, it just stops it until they're fixed. The flagship you have to fight(although you can bug out once or twice if it hacks your O2 or something) but it's really easy to run from anything else if you don't think you can win. cock hero flux fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Apr 11, 2014 |
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Apr 11, 2014 06:28
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I agree with cock hero flux, it was the point I was trying to make earlier. Perhaps the reason a lot of people in this thread don't enjoy FTL that much is because it's not a roguelike, as in, it is not much like rogue at all. For a start it is not turn based which makes playing it more akin to an action game. Completely different skill set required from nethack or crawl where you can carefully consider every move then execute it perfectly. Permadeath and a few random elements doesn't make a "roguelike". Not that that's a bad thing. I like FTL.
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Apr 11, 2014 08:09
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..btt posted:I agree with cock hero flux, it was the point I was trying to make earlier. Perhaps the reason a lot of people in this thread don't enjoy FTL that much is because it's not a roguelike, as in, it is not much like rogue at all. For a start it is not turn based which makes playing it more akin to an action game. Completely different skill set required from nethack or crawl where you can carefully consider every move then execute it perfectly. While you probably make a good point here, my serious FTL runs are mostly spent in pause mode. Every time something unexpected happens, you can just press space and have all the time in the world to think about your next move and give orders.
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Apr 11, 2014 08:12
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Mercury_Storm posted:In FLT I don't really like the idea of "Hey you're running from a gigantic rebel fleet", while also being forced to maximize your grind through each system just so you're prepared for the end game. Maybe if there were an alternate way to beat the game that didn't involve having to fight a huge, three tiered boss every time it would be more interesting. Also boarding parties become way easier once you learn how good upgraded doors+the harsh vacuum of space are versus weak little intruders. Literally just plopping people in the medbay and venting everything to the void works half the time. Klaus Kinski posted:If stores had a larger selection, it would be much easier to work towards a reasonable goal instead of commiting to a weapon/drone/boarding build early and praying the rest of the pieces fall into place later.
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Apr 11, 2014 08:18
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IronicDongz posted:Also boarding parties become way easier once you learn how good upgraded doors+the harsh vacuum of space are versus weak little intruders. Literally just plopping people in the medbay and venting everything to the void works half the time. Boarding parties are easy just because a level 1 medbay can outheal a mantis boarder so as long as you've got 3 crewmen you can hold off essentially any boarding event provided you stay on top of things. Things get tricky if you have 3 or fewer crew because then you absolutely need to have them in the medbay to keep them alive which means if you get more than 3 boarders and the extra decide to take out the O2 you might be in trouble.
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Apr 11, 2014 08:28
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