That did it!
Viewing post in Order Automatica Experimental Branch comments
I definitely had fun overall, even if the shop RNG was really frustrating at times.
This turned into a much longer post than I was anticipating! Please take this feedback constructively and not as complaining. I appreciate the time you've put into the game and understand how hard it is to put something you've built out in front of other people. I also recognize that I'm not really offering many solutions with my comments here, so good luck :)
- I'll start with (what I think are) two bugs:
- In the current experimental build, everyone can hold two items. You can't equip a third, but if you merge to a level 3 (with at least three total items among merged units), the level three unit will keep a third item. It's not displayed on the unit portrait, but is there if you hover. Merging to a level 2 only keeps 2 items from among merged units.
- If you distill "Book of the True Cell", the resulting distillation says "AT THE START OF EACH BATTLE ROUND Trigger unit's special ability 1 time per phase". This doesn't work as I expected. Based on the description, I expected this to cause the unit's ability to trigger at the beginning of each battle round (as displayed in the counter at the top of the screen). Instead, it only seems to trigger at the start of round 1. I'm not sure what the reference to phase is here, but it could maybe be clarified.
- With two starting item slots, the Disposable/Manifester combo (Disposable in hold slot with Manifester distillation(s) equipped) becomes way too powerful. I already thought it was really good with just one item slot.
- I feel like Disposable, Trickster, Selfless, and Featureless are in a pretty good place.
- Summons are okay at the beginning, but very underpowered in the late game
- With only 3 units activating abilities on death, Underestimated basically has a 37.5% chance of being useful. It feels really bad to spawn a 1/1 Featureless or Disposable from a level 3 Underestimated. Because of this it also doesn't really help to trigger her ability multiple times.
- Hermits are also not great. Even with a couple of the indulgences that give +1/+0 to summons, the skeletons just don't do enough damage to be helpful in the late game.
- I have found Plunderer to also be underpowered. You have to buff his health to give his ability a chance to trigger. But if you have a way to buff his health, you're probably also buffing his attack at the same time. This usually makes his ability a "win more" at best. Maybe if his ability buffed less but it was permanent?
- I have literally never used Manifester other than to distill him for the Disposable. The items don't seem powerful enough on their own (other than maybe Taunter's Headpiece) to make him worthwile.
- Not being able to discard locked units is frustrating and greatly reduces the utility of Disposable (and the +2 gold indulgence). I recognize that this is probably a limitation of how you handle units moving between zones programmatically, but if there was a way to fix this it would be great.