The feedback is always useful, so no worries! But all of these things are actually being tackled. Though confirmation on the issues is helpful since it solidifies what I've been choosing to fix, and how to fix them.
KING was a bug, which has now been fixed in the full version I'm now working on.
SHOT was OP and just needs some nerfs/balancing.
I may separate the armors so each has its own, as well as other ideas I'm cooking to give more incentives to swap. I did consider just taking out the swapping altogether. But with the newer changes, as well as some stuff I'm going to test, and how the idea was to mix movement Modes with Attacking modes, I may keep it.
I need to add more details to split the undiscovered and discovered. Saw that when someone was playing, and they thought they uncovered a spot which happened to also have a Hive. lol I DO want people to miss a Hive while moving, but not because of being mistaken for a discovered tile. I want the experience to be, "I don't need to go back for that clearly undiscovered tile. It's one tile. What's the harm?" I am also adding a new mechanic to deal with the "Metal at the dead end". I am also going to MAYBE allow scrapping a Metal, but I might make it more as a way to free a slot than recover resources. But there can be strategies in gaining resources, so it might be a little amount.
HP was a side-addition due to how the design was building itself, but grew further.
The process was:
- You can move a Metal.
- Can Metals move onto the path?
- To cross the path, yes, especially since some only move 1 space.
- You can move a Metal onto the path.
- Should enemies damage a Metal if the Metal is on the path?
- Add HP so Metals can be damaged as an added risk.
- But HP doesn't feel significant enough.
- Add events that can damage the Metals so HP now plays as a new resource to keep an eye on.
The issue was more balancing the Events and the HP. The most destructive event (Scrap Storm) was actually nerfed just before the deadline because someone said it did too much damage. I ended up nerfing it too much. That'll change, and there'll be new special enemies that deal damage to Metals not on the path.
The flyers are probably the biggest threat. I even purposefully designed it to where you'd have to explore to see the other side of the wall to see them coming. But this is another balancing issue. Things like making them slower, weaker, less HP, etc to get them just right. As well as variants with better/weaker stats.
I just wanted to fit it all on one screen, so the Launch info was always there. But it's changing to a tab that you click to go between Metals and Launching, which gives me more room to add new mechanics in the menus.
Upgrades were kind of tricky, and they weren't as strong as I set out for them to be. Like fire is a joke, and though neat, is too underpowered. I am fixing that- as well as a lot of the chance stuff and all that. Although, the two main upgrades were damage and range. I am tweaking the upgrades though and making each upgrade fit their playstyle more, as someone wanted FROGs to be a viable strat, which has led to focusing each of their upgrades to cater to strategies- but not TOO much. I still want players to mix and match them.
Balancing the dice is probably one of the bigger things I didn't know how to do. I've learned a little more about how I'll change things up from watching people play and am changing some of the dice mechanics due to it. But yeah, a lot of balancing was needed, but I didn't have enough time to dedicate to it. But now I DO! :V
Rusterdax is amazing. I have so many of his songs downloaded and they work amazingly well for atmosphere. But if you wanna see more of my stuff, I have some unfinished things in my profile. I'd recommend "Knight of the Living Dead", "Medieval Dead" (Which is a full demo), and "Tim's Paradice". Tim's Paradice is where I discovered my animation trick for dice, though all my old stuff could really go for some touching up with my current dev skeelz.
But all in all, the feedback is useful! Thanks a ton for the kind words and thanks for playing Metal Mode! :D