The latest version doesn't address everything you've touched on (I wanted to get the release out today), but let me know what you think about v1.4 ;-)
I will gladly try it, but I won't be able to do it before Sunday as I'm going away for the weekend. And of course you don't need to address anything that I wrote about, that's just a random opinion and it can certainly be wrong :—). However I read the changelog and it sounds good.
By the way, I managed to beat the v1.3 yesterday with the archer, so it's not as unplayable as I first whined about, but still it's really hard and in some parts I had only little control over what was happening.
Thanks a lot man for your continued effort, well done beating the v1.3! Did you cross paths with the big black dragon yet btw? He's the key to a top secret challenge win ;-)
All your feedback makes my head spin with other ideas too, and plans I have for the future of the game. So even when one of your suggestions doesn't make it in 1:1 it still might be part of a decision that somewhat yield the same result, or is close enough to plans I already had.
All this feedback is super valuable!
No, I didn't meet the big black dragon. I was glad to be able to grab the amulet with the last few HPs.
I tried the v1.4, starting with the archer. Since I was already able to beat the v1.3 with him, it was easy and I won on the first attempt. However, I wasn't able to win with any of the other characters, despite having tried it quite a couple of times (with the slasher and with the spark mage). I got pretty close though.
First off, I like that the projectiles are turn-based as well (btw. also the flying numbers are turn-based now which feels a bit funky but it's nothing serious of course). and I was surprised to sometimes get three things at once when opening a chest. XP numbers are a good addition too.
On the other hand, the difficulty seems to be roughly the same as in v1.3, i. e. it's quite hard. The fact that the monsters can break walls increases the difficulty, although not by much (and I think that if the monsters can do it, the player should be allowed to do it as well — I would like it better if the walls couldn't be breached though). And I don't think I've managed to catch an occurence of heavy figure pushing through lighter figures (but I guess it's hard to see anyway, and at least it looks like I was spending less time inside the flies than before).
Some random observations:
- With the spark mage, the necessary (but of course not sufficient) condition of at least getting to see the dragon is to have a well-upgraded fireball and at least some bow. If you don't get the fireball by the time the bats come, you're dead. Up to that time, you get 2 levels and 1 chest if you play well, and that still leaves much to chance.
- Why is it so? Because the bats are faster than you and you need something to get rid of as many of those bats close to you as possible. Sparks do not suffice because they kill a couple in one line but you need to kill primarily those who are immediately dangerous for you. And the fireball has the advantage of blasting you away from those bats, giving you a good head start. (The axe slash is OK for this too but it's not as good because you need to wade right into the bats for it to work.)
- This is even worse when swarmed by the beholders or demons. Sometimes the situation is just so bad that you get hit for 5 or 10 (or even multiple hits) each round without being able to do anything about it, and you're toast in couple of rounds. Again, the only thing that can save you is the fireball, however weak, because it blasts the monsters and yourself in opposite directions, giving you a much needed break.
- Generally, I think that all ordinary monsters should be slower than the player. Some of them maybe just ever so slightly, but I think that if the player wants to run away from them, they should always have the opportunity. Leaving the monsters unchecked isn't really useful anyway, and running away from them will likely bite you later. Bosses, on the other hand, should be kept as they are.
- It is true that the individual monsters walk in more zig-zaggy patterns, but when they make a big horde, the entire horde will just pretty much go straight towards you and we get the good old conga line.
- Btw. it would be good if the fireball would be thrown only at enemies that are reasonably close. Just now, I was killed by the dragon just because the fireball was shot at some enemies that were far off screen instead of at the dragon, like 5 times in a row. Hitting the dragon repeatedly with the fireball was the only thing that could buy me enough time to kill it with the inefficient slashes.
- Some random bits: broken walls seem to change to some random terrain which looks kinda weird; there's still a typo in the hoarder ability (HORDER); the music transitions are a bit buggy (e. g. if you grab a treasure in the final bossfight, you get the treasure music and then the normal music instead of the boss music; you also don't get the victory music in the case of your victory).
Wow, I can tell you put a lot of effort into this, thanks a lot for the feedback! It looks like 1.5 will be a pretty big update! I have a long list of things to do now.
I think we agree that there needs to be some new abilities, and perhaps some of the current abilities should get some additional functionality, like a stagger on whirlwind and/or slash. E.g. more abilities that affect the movement ability of your enemies, because that is definitely the most important aspect.
It would be nice if melee guys didn't "have" to use magic abilities in order to win, though hybrid builds should still be viable.
Since a lot of the attack abilities are quite random, I've been hesitant to let the player destroy walls, but I'll think about it. There is probably a way to make that work. I like the dynamic of walls being a temporary blocker for enemies, but not a permanent one. It allows you a breather, but it's not going to let you carefully funnel in enemies until you win. I think that together with a lot of the other changes coming into 1.5, wall destruction can still work ;-)
Thanks again man, much appreciated feedback, as always!
Well, I don't really put much effort. I just play the game 1-2 times in a row and then I go about my usual work for several hours or a whole day. And after that, I write up a wall of text (but writing something short would be more complicated! :—))
I absolutely agree that the melee attacks in particular need to get boosted. A knockback or stun effect would be great (as I noted when I was ranting about the hammer :—)).
Anyway, just now I had a particularly fortunate run with the axe slash guy, so I was even able to kill the dragon. But I didn't win! The monsters just stood on the amulet all the time and I couldn't get them to go away from it. I tried to run circles and lure them away but I got killed in the process (essentially if you don't run straight away from them, you get hit, and if each of those hits is for 5 or 10, you can't afford to take many of them).
I think that reinforces my point about the monster speed. The monsters in general should be slower than they are now, and none of them (except bosses) should be allowed to be faster than the player. I suspect that the archer is so much easier to win just because he has the 30% speed boost which is just what is needed to evade the monsters efficiently, have them run circles without being hit etc.
Yes, speed and movement is the most complex thing to get right, because it impacts all things!
I still have a bit of work left on 1.5, but a little sneak peak is that staggering is added, and because of it I'll hold off on changing monster speed a lot, because it will impact movement a lot.
Due to the physics involved, a staggered enemy will also slow down any monsters behind it.
Staggered monsters won't just stop, they will also not attack, which helps a lot for melee builds.
So let us see how this impacts the balance og everything, and readjust the difficulty in 1.6 ;-)
Great! One thing though: I would propose putting a couple of words about controls in the "instructions" screen. I just randomly found out that you could move diagonally, and that's a big game changer. Immediately after that I got a win with the spark mage which was something I wasn't able to do before. Maybe I'm just blind, but I don't think this was explained anywhere.
(Also it looks a bit like when going diagonally, you go √2 times farther than going orthogonally, but I'm not sure about that.)
I tried the v1.5.2 a couple of times and there's a lot to say. I even recorded a video of me playing (I got an easy win with the archer; I killed the big black dragon, and in fact it didn't even touch me). So if you are interested how a "veteran player" (😃) played the game, you can look at it at https://is.muni.cz/de/darek/horde.mp4 (beware though, it has ~200M and since it's on a temporary deposit provided by my university, it will remain there only for 30 days). I will probably refer to it when I write more.
oh wow, that was a powerful build! Even got the winged boots there, paired with freeze control!
I completely agree that the Archer right now is the very definition of "be the bullet hell", and scales up a bit too fast. When you have more kills than turns there's something off! Haha!
Well done though, you made a lot of small tactical choices there that gave you such a dominant powercurve, but the archer is definitely a bit OP right now. And this was even without an artifact bow!
I've got some work to do to rebalanced this for 1.6! But thanks again man, super valuable insight!
Thanks! Some bits I wanted to offer:
- First off, as noted by other commenters, the game is too long now. Personally, I think it would be the best if you could get to the first dragon (and the regular victory) in 10-15 minutes. Now it is 30 minutes which definitely feels too much. And I don't mean that the game would necessarily be boring, I just mean that you want the players to "fail faster". If you die 5 minutes into the game, it's OK. If you die in the bossfight 10 min into the game, still it's OK and you will want to try again. Die in the bossfight half an hour into the game though, and the player will feel exhausted/frustrated. Mostly they will say "I'm not playing that again for now" and go away.
- Others have said that there was too little pressure, but I don't really agree. There needs to be more pressure, but not by much. I tried playing with the other classes and the pressure is actually quite okay for them; it's more like the archer needs to be nerfed 😃. If you would like to make it shorter, I think it would be good to keep the delays between the waves more or less as they are and just cut a couple of the waves (esp. the wolves and the orcs). I guess it would also be better to choose some waves randomly, e. g. in each game, send either the bats or the weird white spheres but not both. Maybe also randomly choose between the wolves and the basic green orcs (they seem to be pretty similar and it can start to drag a little bit).
- The chests and the items are a nice idea, however so far they are a bit too simplistic. The main problem is that there seems to be more or less a strict ordering of the items (maybe I'm just thinking too rigidly but it looks like it is so). Some examples: with boots: any speed bonus > resistance, and among two resistances, the higher is better. With weapons: artifact weapon > upgraded weapon (crossbow, nice staff, battleaxe etc.) > your basic weapon > everything else. With books, I as the archer ranked freeze book > burn book > the other two. In this way, you're waiting for a very small subset of items, and most of the chests you ever open are then useless (and that can feel frustrating) — see the video, where I was constantly offered axes, staves and other stuff that I didn't want 😃. A solution to this problem could be introducing a couple of more items with incomparable effects that would be useful for any class (I have some wild ideas, I can give you a raw unsorted list if you want to, but no guarantees that it will be useful 😃).
- The artifacts are a really nice idea. I got one only once, but it's great to occasionally be able to try and fight through up to the big black dragon.
- Random stuff: the fireball sound is way too loud and long, listening to it for half an hour straight can get tiring fast; the music still gets messed up occasionally (the treasure music often replaces the main music totally, sometimes they both get played simultaneously); a pointer in the form of equilateral triangle is not very practical (hard to see which way it is pointing); I don't understand the sun book description at all (does it do anything?) and not sure about workings of the burn book either; "melee speed" is quite a confusing description but I found out that it equals more reach with axe slash (a hugely useful thing) — perhaps it would be better to talk about "melee reach"; when you get the amulet for 1024 XP, it shows as "+102" on one line and "4" below that; potions and food seem to be grabbed by the greed skill and that sometimes leads to an accidental gobbling of these precious consumables when you didn't intend to eat them (btw. it would also be nice if the 3 potions at the southern boss could be taken one by one; I mostly manage to grab two at the same time and much of the healing is wasted)