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Farquar posted:I have no problem with people who say that. That's a wonderful opinion to have. I'm talking about the people who literally said "It sucks" or "It's nothing but bad design decisions".
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Jan 18, 2022 18:55
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Synthetik is kind of subtle about building your character, there are several different upgrade systems running at once that you may or may not get the ability to access in each run. In some runs you'll never find weapon upgrade kits, or body upgrades, or powerful guns, or good items. You never have a clue what upgrades are coming to you in future levels, but none of the upgrades you choose now 'lock you in' to a specific build or playstyle. So instead of making choices based on, for example, what Attack augment you chose or what Cast augment you chose, you make choices based on what suits the way you play and what suits the weapons and items you've found. There's almost never any clear, obvious answer about what to upgrade or what to choose. Personally I love that, though I can also see why game design has partially shifted away from it for the mass market. And with that I think I've realized what made Hades as popular as it was; it was designed with the mass market in mind. That's not a bad thing and doesn't make it a bad game and I'm not posting it as a negative, I just think it's the explanation for why it's 10x more popular than other games in the genre - it took out the grognard things which are barriers for entry to a lot of gamers.
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Jan 18, 2022 19:00
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Foul Fowl posted:you should try wizard of legend, it's like hades with a lower budget and no story, and it's a lot harder imo. the metaprogression comes in the form of unlocking the multitude of different spells the game has on offer. and you can get new wizard robes & hat with (seemingly) small bonuses. Wizard of Legend is one of the games I was thinking of when I made my previous post. Besides the general focus on cooldown cycling which I'm not a fan of, it felt like 80% of my time in an actual run was spent being bored, either walking or fighting a handful of enemies too easy to be interesting but too damaging to rush through.
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Jan 18, 2022 19:01
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Hades is a snappy, great-feeling action game in it's heart with a lot of interesting weapons, abilities, and unlockable upgrades to switch between. It's not terribly deep- most synergies are pretty obvious with a little thought, enemies are very basic and have easy answers even with builds not 'equipped' to deal with them, and there's more then a few 'I Win' setups- but it feels good to play and none of it feels 'bad'- some folks might not like a weapon class or two, but there's fans of all weapons and even all aspects. The game is quick and fun and a good quick way to throw down an hour and feel like you got something out of it. It's also one of those cases where the presentation absolutely makes the game because too many roguelikes eventually start to make runs that fail in early levels a waste of time. In Hades though you end up back home and turns out Hypnos has a comment on how you died and Dad has some fresh new snark to throw your way (somehow, still, dozens of hours and over a hundred failed runs in) and it turns out hey, Achilles and Nyx are hanging out with new dialog to advance their plotlines so you get a moment to chill out and think about something besides how lovely that last run is so you're fresh when you get back to stand in front of the Mirror of Night thinking of what to change up for the next try. This is Supergiant's greatest trick in Hades. They took the worst part of any Roguelike- the quick feedbackless, timewasted failure- and both gave it a reward of it's own by giving you stuff that progresses even on bad runs without feeling like pity pandering, and did so in such a way you're likely not going into the next run mad unless you're just not here for anything besides pure gameplay in your roguelike, which is a goddamn amazing bit of design philosophy and a master class on why presentation loving matters. Like, I've just spent a hundred hours with Gunfire Reborn and it's night and day how bad it feels to die in LongLing Tomb on Ressurection 4+ in Gunfire versus dying in Asphodel on a 20+ Heat run in Hades- I'm usually done for the night after more than one of the former, while I'll get right back to it in Hades... after a break to talk with Dusa about her chores. If you're mostly just mad there's too much fluff between you and your run, Hades is probably the wrong game. But that doesn't detract from how strong all the moving parts of Hades feed to each other.
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Jan 18, 2022 19:02
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I have a strong distaste for several of hades’ decisions, such as extremely vertical metaprogression and options within a run to either get more metacurrency or help your current run, but it’s also one of my favorite roguelites ever which I sunk over a hundred hours into and was a joy to experience from top to bottom, so it turns out those issues are pretty unimportant at the end of the day. hats off to supergiant.
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Jan 18, 2022 19:05
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deep dish peat moss posted:Synthetik is kind of subtle about building your character, there are several different upgrade systems running at once that you may or may not get the ability to access in each run. In some runs you'll never find weapon upgrade kits, or body upgrades, or powerful guns, or good items. You never have a clue what upgrades are coming to you in future levels, but none of the upgrades you choose now 'lock you in' to a specific build or playstyle. So instead of making choices based on, for example, what Attack augment you chose or what Cast augment you chose, you make choices based on what suits the way you play and what suits the weapons and items you've found. There's almost never any clear, obvious answer about what to upgrade or what to choose. Personally I love that, though I can also see why game design has partially shifted away from it for the mass market. This sounds rad and I'm upset I didn't buy it was $5 recently. Looks like I'm waiting for the Steam sale next month.
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Jan 18, 2022 19:09
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Mr. Locke posted:It's also one of those cases where the presentation absolutely makes the game because too many roguelikes eventually start to make runs that fail in early levels a waste of time. In Hades though you end up back home and turns out Hypnos has a comment on how you died and Dad has some fresh new snark to throw your way (somehow, still, dozens of hours and over a hundred failed runs in) and it turns out hey, Achilles and Nyx are hanging out with new dialog to advance their plotlines so you get a moment to chill out and think about something besides how lovely that last run is so you're fresh when you get back to stand in front of the Mirror of Night thinking of what to change up for the next try. This is Supergiant's greatest trick in Hades. They took the worst part of any Roguelike- the quick feedbackless, timewasted failure- and both gave it a reward of it's own by giving you stuff that progresses even on bad runs without feeling like pity pandering, and did so in such a way you're likely not going into the next run mad unless you're just not here for anything besides pure gameplay in your roguelike, which is a goddamn amazing bit of design philosophy and a master class on why presentation loving matters. See, that's another thing I didn't like about it  When I die in a run I just want to click a button on a menu to start a new one ASAP. I don't want to talk to NPCs or hear dialog or see who they're hanging out with or turn in metacurrency to unlock new rugs for the hub. It was a punishment to me, not a reward.I find these discussions in this thread very interesting every time because it opens my eyes to how subjective liking literally any game is and where all different viewpoints on a game come from. As an artist who has been designing a game primarily as a vehicle for my art it's helpful for me to understand what makes that kind of stuff fun and engaging in games for people who like it, because despite making a game heavily based on it, it's not my kinda thing. deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 19:10
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Farquar posted:Should I jump straight to Synthetik 2? Absolutely not. It's nowhere near finished and also it's a pretty different game so it's best to start with the first one.
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Jan 18, 2022 19:15
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Incidentally, Synthetik is not only one of the games with absolute best gunfeel I have ever played, but also probably the only game I played with weapon upgrades where I seriously have to consider damage output vs handling, because the handling system and fairly intricate and some upgrades might give you way bigger numbers but make the gun absolute pain in the rear end to actually use. It's very VERY good. With the exception of metaprogression being absolute horseshit but thankfully it's easily negated by just editing your savefile
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Jan 18, 2022 19:20
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Mr. Locke posted:Hades is a snappy, great-feeling action game in it's heart with a lot of interesting weapons, abilities, and unlockable upgrades to switch between. It's not terribly deep- most synergies are pretty obvious with a little thought, enemies are very basic and have easy answers even with builds not 'equipped' to deal with them, and there's more then a few 'I Win' setups- but it feels good to play and none of it feels 'bad'- some folks might not like a weapon class or two, but there's fans of all weapons and even all aspects. The game is quick and fun and a good quick way to throw down an hour and feel like you got something out of it. What the gently caress dude, you already had the Objectively Correct people come in to tell you the game is objectively bad, and if you liked it then you're a drooling idiot who only cares about bright lights and shiny colors. I don't see why you can't just accept that you're an uncultured, stupid fuckup and move on?
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Jan 18, 2022 20:08
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I simply choose to not tie my personal esteem to which games I enjoy, and thus am invincible to the grognards criticizing my preferences.
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Jan 18, 2022 20:10
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Jack Trades posted:Incidentally, Synthetik is not only one of the games with absolute best gunfeel I have ever played, but also probably the only game I played with weapon upgrades where I seriously have to consider damage output vs handling, because the handling system and fairly intricate and some upgrades might give you way bigger numbers but make the gun absolute pain in the rear end to actually use. I laughed so hard the first time i picked up the 420 sniperdragon and figured out what it did
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Jan 18, 2022 20:25
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I enjoyed Synthetik a lot but I gave up on playing it since either I or my friend would crash before ending a co-op run. That was over a year ago and since then we've both gotten new PCs and I assume the game has been patched a few times so we should probably give it another go. I've been plugging away at Rift Wizard lately and I'm getting to rift 20+ consistently but have not been able to clear the last few insanely tough rifts. I'm gonna get u Mordred 
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Jan 18, 2022 20:29
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Mr. Locke posted:It's also one of those cases where the presentation absolutely makes the game because too many roguelikes eventually start to make runs that fail in early levels a waste of time. In Hades though you end up back home and turns out Hypnos has a comment on how you died and Dad has some fresh new snark to throw your way (somehow, still, dozens of hours and over a hundred failed runs in) and it turns out hey, Achilles and Nyx are hanging out with new dialog to advance their plotlines so you get a moment to chill out and think about something besides how lovely that last run is so you're fresh when you get back to stand in front of the Mirror of Night thinking of what to change up for the next try. This is Supergiant's greatest trick in Hades. They took the worst part of any Roguelike- the quick feedbackless, timewasted failure- and both gave it a reward of it's own by giving you stuff that progresses even on bad runs without feeling like pity pandering, and did so in such a way you're likely not going into the next run mad unless you're just not here for anything besides pure gameplay in your roguelike, which is a goddamn amazing bit of design philosophy and a master class on why presentation loving matters. This is true and a large part of why I liked Hades, but I also found that not long after finishing the main storyline I reached a point where I was considerably more interested in the epilogue and the various side stories than I was in actually winning more runs -- I'd reached a point where I didn't want to keep smashing my face into the buzzsaw that was increasing Heat further, but had lost interest in endlessly re-playing the game at lower Heat levels, too. And at that point I just put the game down, because slogging through 40+ minutes¹ of the dungeon over and over again in exchange for a teaspoon of new dialogue each time just wasn't worth it for me. I think this also makes me the diametric opposite of deep dish peat moss -- rather than wanting a button that skips all the dialogue and just catapults me back into the dungeon, I want a button that skips all the parts of the dungeon that aren't dialogue. This kind of seems like I really want Hades: the VN, but I don't think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much without the hack-and-slash part; the problem is that as someone who doesn't have the interest (or, frankly, the free time) to achieve the system mastery needed for Heat 20+ to be fun, that part wore thin much faster than the talky bits -- in large part because the structure of the game means you are spending 90% of your time stabbing, and there's a lot less variation in it. ¹ I saw someone earlier posting that they routinely cleared runs in 20 minutes and all I can say is, how the gently caress
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Jan 18, 2022 20:38
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ToxicFrog posted:¹ I saw someone earlier posting that they routinely cleared runs in 20 minutes and all I can say is, how the gently caress avoid heat options that increase TTK, and pick good boons, especially from Chaos. while it's no longer self-multiplicative like it was in open beta / early release, Chaos can still repeatedly give you stacking damage buffs; combine that with someone like Athena or... god, it's been long enough I don't even remember who the other good DPS gods are, but basically big additive buffs x the few remaining instances of separate multiplicative bonuses = hella damage e: also mirror bonuses are really important, if set-and-forget. if you have a choice between damage output and survivability take damage every time, plus there are some less obvious cases where one damage-boosting buff is way, way better than the other despite being presented as equal Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 20:47
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Jedit posted:Hades is a series of awful design decisions piled on top of each other which is liked because people love to fellate the developer. I checked out fast enough to get a refund when I saw that it had isometric level design but absolute directional controls. are you trying to play on a keyboard or something
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Jan 18, 2022 20:47
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why wouldn't you play hades on keyboard
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Jan 18, 2022 20:48
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IronicDongz posted:why wouldn't you play hades on keyboard i believe it does actually have analog directional movement, so there is a genuine advantage to using a controller -- it's just weighed against how much mouse aim helps. (which itself depends heavily on weapon choice, plus the game has pretty generous auto-aim, so you could definitely go either way)
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Jan 18, 2022 20:50
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:i believe it does actually have analog directional movement, so there is a genuine advantage to using a controller -- it's just weighed against how much mouse aim helps. (which itself depends heavily on weapon choice, plus the game has pretty generous auto-aim, so you could definitely go either way) Yeah, I play with M+KB and hearing how everyone who plays on controller thinks that makes me a mutant just makes me wonder if nobody else plays Rail or Bow or uses Dionysus casts because I can't imagine how ankward ranged combat requiring charging or positional aiming must be on controller.
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Jan 18, 2022 21:04
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Mr. Locke posted:Yeah, I play with M+KB and hearing how everyone who plays on controller thinks that makes me a mutant just makes me wonder if nobody else plays Rail or Bow or uses Dionysus casts because I can't imagine how ankward ranged combat requiring charging or positional aiming must be on controller. It's extremely easy because on controller your aim automatically snaps to targets when you nudge your joystick anywhere in their general direction
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Jan 18, 2022 21:20
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yeah hades is absolutely controller focused, you could play kb+m and it probably works, but if you found the game awkward and were playing on that, that might be why. i hit an escalating heat 13 win streak and had to never play again, but i very much enjoy hades.
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Jan 18, 2022 21:25
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Bow/Gun are fine on controller, except for the Gun's secondary. You can still use it alright, but it's pretty much impossible to set up precise AoE shots anymore, it just functions as a delayed nuke centered on one target.
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Jan 18, 2022 21:26
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maybe people would like other action roguelikes besides hades if they were also v gay
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Jan 18, 2022 21:42
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I think you'll find that if you look at the evidence the two ships in monolith are gay for each other. in this essay I will
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Jan 18, 2022 21:44
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Snooze Cruise posted:maybe people would like other action roguelikes besides hades if they were also v gay oh, so, boyfriend dungeon
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Jan 18, 2022 21:54
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megane posted:My main quibble with Hades' currencies is that you're frequently presented with a choice between metacurrency and something useful for your current run, e.g. when presented with a Nectar door and a Heart door. "Never encourage the player to weaken their current run in favor of later runs" is one of the big Rules of Non-Awful Metaprogression. edit: oh whoops the thread has moved really fast. Lots has been said about Hades but I don't think anyone has corrected this: You are never asked to choose between metaprog and normal prog. All choices will be one category or the other, explicitly. Hades is a good game, and I'm sorry for the minority who don't like it, but the consensus ship sailed long ago. Serephina fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 22:01
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there are a couple of places where you're prompted to spend gold on metaprogression resources, but that's a lot less aggressive and the most prominent / guaranteed example is at the very end of the run where if you got there then you didn't need that gold to progress anyways there's still kind of a perverse incentive once you know that shop is there though
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Jan 18, 2022 22:07
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Been playing a bit of Blade Assault - it's pretty good. Cribs a bit from all the major roguelites out there, so there's recognizable elements from a lot of other games. Worst part is, as ever, the lovely vertical metaprogression that's just +% do better, but it's not super excessive, and there's a bunch of other unlocks that are more characters, more weapon upgrades, more initial tools for runs, more rerolls on random elements in runs, etc, so those are decidedly better than the boring stat upgrade tree. I feel like it doesn't have quite enough run to run variety to keep people hooked, although the other characters are very cool. Given that it's all of $18 (and discounted atm), I don't think that's an unreasonable ask, just from what I've seen https://store.steampowered.com/app/1367300/Blade_Assault/
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Jan 18, 2022 22:24
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Anybody played much Fights in Tight Spaces? It looks really cool even though I have at least three other deckbuilders I should probably try to get good at first
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Jan 18, 2022 22:29
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Serephina posted:edit: oh whoops the thread has moved really fast. Lots has been said about Hades but I don't think anyone has corrected this: You are never asked to choose between metaprog and normal prog. All choices will be one category or the other, explicitly. When I was trying to unlock all the weapon aspect upgrades I would typically bank tons of gold starting relatively early in the run to save up for the buyable metaprog currency in the final act, because the gain rate for stuff like Titan Blood was pretty atrocious.
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Jan 18, 2022 22:33
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Poor Blade Assault, it released today (or yesterday?) and what in the end people talked from the last 70 posts is Hades instead.
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Jan 18, 2022 22:40
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Hades (as well as most games with metaprogression) are really good once you open up CheatEngine and give yourself 99999 of everything so you can actually play the game without having to farm items.
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Jan 18, 2022 22:43
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Serephina posted:edit: oh whoops the thread has moved really fast. Lots has been said about Hades but I don't think anyone has corrected this: You are never asked to choose between metaprog and normal prog. All choices will be one category or the other, explicitly.  Door choices are apparently separated into metacurrency and non-metacurrency, but even there, there are upgrades that give you in-run effects from acquiring metacurrency, so you might have to choose between [Darkness+Healing] and [Nectar]. e: Oh yeah, and I forgot the handful of boons that give you metacurrency; you can be offered that or a "real" boon. megane fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 22:46
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It's been in beta for a while but the big Nova Drift update that randomizes enemy waves is out, excited to check that out tonight.
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Jan 18, 2022 22:47
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goferchan posted:It's been in beta for a while but the big Nova Drift update that randomizes enemy waves is out, excited to check that out tonight. Been playing that too, it's good - but Nova Drift has always been good I've been on a roguelite kick lately actually, monolith, dead cells, scourgebringer, and now blade assault ... vertical meta progression sucks
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Jan 18, 2022 23:11
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megane posted:Door choices are apparently separated into metacurrency and non-metacurrency, but even there, there are upgrades that give you in-run effects from acquiring metacurrency, so you might have to choose between [Darkness+Healing] and [Nectar]. You might have to choose between [darkness+healing] and [nectar + rerolls] you mean, which is a fine choice. The boon you're thinking of, Ocean's Bounty, also increases obol income. You can absolutely use it to fuel a build. Or maybe you're thinking of Sunken Treasure, which spits out obols and healing? I just don't know what to say about the shop thing. Hades fuckin' bends over backwards to make the metaprog not a burden but a pleasure as you progress a dialogue/sotry, but the presence of metaprog just breaks some people and we get these posts. You don't have to buy the thing in the shops, basic shops are a detour, and it's not being presented as an either/or choice; they're a bonus to scoop up if you're doing a +obol build (something that might need the aforementioned boons...) since typically the player only has enough cash to buy a single boon. Basically, when I see people making GBS threads all over the mechanics it's from people who only touched the game briefly and then spout objectively wrong things. Like you said megane when comparing heart doors to nectar doors (no such thing), which I was responding to. Or repeating with the darkness/nectar choice just now but forgetting that they both have in-run perks. Gah.
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Jan 18, 2022 23:16
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DoubleDonut posted:Anybody played much Fights in Tight Spaces? It looks really cool even though I have at least three other deckbuilders I should probably try to get good at first It was okay. I didn't regret it, although I played it in early access, got a couple of wins, and then dropped it. My complaints may or may not be still valid, since I have no idea how the balance changed since-  These opinions are based on the state of the game when I played it, and may no longer be valid since it's been a year.The good: - The game is mostly intuitive and does a good job with a basic tutorial/training section teaching you how the game works - Setting up cool reactions/combos to make enemies beat each other up feels good - You can watch a replay the fight after you win, SUPERHOT style, to see all the actions you and the enemy took in something approaching real-time The bad: - The tutorial and the UI was not always very good at communicating consequences. Interrupting enemies or triggering enemies intentionally is an extremely important part of the game, but I had to make educated guesses on interactions until I had experimented and could properly identify how they worked - The UI doesn't really explain what map icons are or why you would path toward specific rewards - The way fights/enemies scale mean that you can't really expect to benefit from block/retaliation cards in the long run, and that family of cards end up effectively becoming dead draws by the end of the game. - The game absolutely does not explain any of the force-draw mechanics it uses, so you won't know that you're guaranteed to draw movement every turn. - The replay system when I played broke when taking certain actions related to returning cards to your hand, so I never got to see replays of later fights since I found those cards to be useful and strong It's fun, I'd recommend anyone pick it up on sale, but I didn't find it had much long-term staying power nor desire to replay it after I got a couple wins.
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Jan 18, 2022 23:25
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It's better than when Olesh played it, and notably block counter is... semi viable, but some of their concerns are still very relevant and there's an incredibly clear dominant playstyle. it also explains the force draw mechanics now, or rather, there are multiple difficulties with different mechanics for that It's good for at least your first couple wins imo, and I'm probably going to get all the achievements except the speedrun one without getting overly bored. It's improved significantly from a year ago and has significantly more card variety available, without entirely hamstringing any given playstyle because you will get waaaaaay more card offerings than you will actually take.
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Jan 18, 2022 23:36
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Thanks to everyone who gave their thoughts on Caves of Qud earlier, it is a fun game and the aesthetic and writing are totally fantastic even the balance feels a bit off. I get that it's probably supposed to be one of those games where breaking the game is the objective but it does feel like you have to go out of your way to avoid certain things that are just broken by design like beguiling and domination. I generally prefer games with a more tactical approach but it's a fun change of pace.
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Jan 18, 2022 23:43
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DoubleDonut posted:Anybody played much Fights in Tight Spaces? It looks really cool even though I have at least three other deckbuilders I should probably try to get good at first I hate how some of the enemies just punish you for having fun if you don't have the exact right build. I hate the gun guys who autoshoot you for walking into their line of sight. I hate the snowballing that happens with most of your upgrades coming from optional objectives and locations that can result in you just never getting more actions per turn because you don't have the right build for the randomly-chosen objective type that gets you more action points. I hate how some builds are just actively detrimental to try to use, because they're slow-and-steady but a solid half of the optional objectives are about quickly clearing or moving across the map. FITS is a game that I think everyone should buy if they're interested in the concept... but maybe wait for it to go on sale. Olesh posted:The bad: 1) You can now mouse over enemies and get a full explanation of what they do and when. 2) That's still a thing, which means not only can you miss the action point upgrades, you can miss the opportunities for them. It's stupid. 3) Blocking and dodging and retaliating has kind of gotten buffed if you go all-in, thanks to better cards that have been added, but many of the basic ones are still dead draws by midgame, and even if they weren't, the strategy just does not operate the way the game wants you to play. 4) Not only do they explain it now, changing how it works is the key component of the difficulty level. 5) Replays are still a little wonky, especially when you move twice in one action, but they usually course correct pretty quickly, and they work preeetty well most of the time. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 23:43
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