Fort Triumph - Fantasy XCOM meets OotS [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Maryring

2018-04-26, 07:51 PM

I used the second code. Idle thoughts as I play this.

The humour is bit dry for my tastes. Maybe it'll loosen up as I play more.

The gameplay is VERY much XCOM. Which doesn't have to be a bad thing. I do like XCOM. Still too early to tell how it'll differ from the XCOM games, but for now it's enjoyable.

The tutorial holds your hand through everything, except the final turn when you beat the troll. May be an idea to just have a mention of "you seem to have the gist of things. Now take out that troll." Just to have a natural transfer away from the handholding.

Love the storyteller's mugshot.

Bloodlust states that it "Does not cost AP when there are no activated enemies". My first thought was "what does this mean?". Perhaps reformulate this so it's immediately clear? Just changing "activated enemies" to "enemies aware of you" or something like that.

I like how the accuracy calculations are shown. But the hit chances still seem to fall of way fast.

I don't like actions during the banter. I don't need to be told that someone's rolling their eyes. Saying that you'll be raiding a poet's guild should give enough sense of personality by itself.

Suddenly my people are on fire. The tutorial did not warn this might happen, and there were no warning signs on the tiles either. Consider adding this.

Some easy way to see the range of a particular enemy's attacks would be nice.

Can heal potions be traded? I would like to trade heal potions.

Also, a water spell would be nice.

The Paladin is pretty useless.

Yeah. This first stage is WAAAY too hard for an introduction stage. You want to ease players into the game. Not frustrate them with a sudden 10 goblin charge.

What even is the point of "Become a Tree"? Making cover does not seem to be in her job description.

Fire spreads WAY too easily and quickly.

Yeah, miss chances are much too high.

And now the game's become frustrating, rather than fun. So that's the end of my playing. Hope you find the feedback worthwhile.

deuterio12

2018-04-26, 08:43 PM

I grabbed the last 6JQP2-7IR73-65WQW code, gonna test it when I have some time, probably during the weekend.

NeoVid

2018-04-26, 09:45 PM

Used the next-to-last code. I'll let it download while I'm AFK and give first impressions later tonight.

Aragehaor

2018-04-26, 10:13 PM

It seems pretty interesting, i took the fourth code on the list, K3XY6-P7CBG-0Z4C0.

I'll post again if i have any semi-useful feedback to provide.

Lionheart

2018-04-27, 12:24 AM

Looks great! I'm taking the fifth code down the list!

NeoVid

2018-04-27, 01:01 AM

Played up until I was defeated at the undead boss fight. Didn't run into a single technical issue, which is a great change of pace from most early access games! The first thing that stood out to me was that the player character animations look like they're playing in fast motion, and the dialogue is pretty stiff, but the game's nowhere near done yet, I'm sure that sort of stuff will get polished up later.

The big problem I had was that I lost a character in each zone of the prologue, with no way to recover. I went into the necromancer fight with only two characters and didn't stand a chance, and reloading put me back at the start of that fight's zone, still down two characters. Though weirdly enough, my remaining characters kept the XP they'd earned during the attempt I failed. Intentional? Being able to level from failed attempts seems like a decent way to break out of the genre's traditional death spirals, but I'd really be happier with a way to revive my characters outside of combat.

Related to this, the necromancer boss traded banter with a character who had died in the previous area and wasn't present for the encounter.

All fixable problems, though. And I hope they get fixed, as I was having fun until I was beaten by the prologue.

DemonicAngel

2018-04-27, 03:06 AM

I used ZH7B3-63IDA-CZDDD, just a heads up

adamzeira

2018-04-27, 03:41 AM

Thanks for the awesome responses guys. Wrote down everything, implementing a bunch as we speak.

Also great seeing people getting into it :) I'll see about getting more codes

By the way - There are 2 big pieces to the game right now - the prologue, and the real campaign. The prologue plays very differently (3 consecutive missions) from the rest of the game, which instead has a strategic layer between missions where you travel the world similarly to Heroes. You should check it out as well. It's a very different experience, in my opinion a much better one, to the point that we're debating if to put the prologue in a separate section so players experience the campaign first

I'm also a bit dissatisfied with some of the dialogues in tutorial and prologues writing. None of them are bad, but there are much wittier and on-point bits in later chapters, and it's unfortunate because it's the first thing the player experiences. Maybe we can do some writing contest for this thing with rewards. If you want to give writing a more fluid tutorial a shot, PM me

The tutorial holds your hand through everything, except the final turn when you beat the troll. May be an idea to just have a mention of "you seem to have the gist of things. Now take out that troll." Just to have a natural transfer away from the handholding.

Good idea, on it

The big problem I had was that I lost a character in each zone of the prologue, with no way to recover. I went into the necromancer fight with only two characters and didn't stand a chance, and reloading put me back at the start of that fight's zone, still down two characters. Though weirdly enough, my remaining characters kept the XP they'd earned during the attempt I failed. Intentional? Being able to level from failed attempts seems like a decent way to break out of the genre's traditional death spirals, but I'd really be happier with a way to revive my characters outside of combat.

Not intentional - discovered a bug we all missed :)
The game is actually split into two - the prologue, which we wrote much earlier on, and the game itself (Fort Triumph: Short War). In the real game when you lose units you can recruit new ones by traveling around the world
People liked the prologue, so we kept it around. I agree it's awkward... I suppose we could revive characters at the end of every mission, though it would send the wrong message about how your characters can die permanently later

It'd be a shame to discard it entirely as well... Maybe the best solution would be reviving characters with a "this is the prologue so you get a pass, be aware it will not happen in the rest of the game" message

It's not a great idea, more like the least worst one from what I can come up with

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-04-27, 05:09 AM

This game is *extremely* relevant to my interests. Relevant enough that I dropped the money down on buying Early Release. To give you an idea, this is the second game I have *EVER* purchased Early Release on. The real sale point for me, in addition to the game itself combining my favorite genres, was native Linux compatibility, so I don't have to fiddle around with WINE.

Some thoughts:

I will definitely concur that while the first mission was extremely 'hand holding', the second mission tosses you rather into the deep end with little warning or preparation. I managed without anyone dying on Normal difficulty, but there were a few close calls. I will also concur that fire spreads WAY too easily.

Breaking it up by being able to only trigger some of the goblins would be a better way, place a few of them close to the entrance, then a second squad further in the town. That way, you can defeat them separately, OR you can screw up and trigger the second pack while dealing with the first. Which is a classical XCOM tactical problem.

While I love your graphical style, you need to telegraph things better. For example, despite having used it once, I still have no real clue what Whirlwind actually does. Some kind of ranged Kick maybe? I also don't know what kind of range and/or line of effect it has either. I suspect it is far more potent than I am giving it credit for, but the game doesn't give me any information about what it does or where it does it. You also need to use a different color for 1AP movement and 2AP movement. The issue here is that while within the 1AP movement area, the 2AP movement is faded, once you go into the 2AP movement, the 1AP movement area becomes quite difficult to see. I'd prefer a color change, and preferably a color that isn't used in the main palette, for the movement area.

On the same topic of conveyance, I'd like a way to know if I can actually hit something when moving into a square during the movement phase, that way I can plan my movement better. Oh, and if something can be kicked, a display of where they are going to go, and what might be impacted, would be really useful when considering your actions. Again, you place a very heavy focus on terrain and obstacles (something I absolutely approve of, by the way), but you don't show how you can interact with said terrain and obstacles very well.

Another part that I find a bit clumsy are the controls. Right click is confirm rather than cancel, and left click is cancel rather than confirm. Caused more than a few misclicks there.

Highlighting an enemy when mousing over that enemy's card on the top right of the screen would be a good idea, or panning to that enemy to clearly show which one it is.

Looks like you are using the XCOM RNG... 95% chance to hit... and a miss. Well done. Overall, the accuracy thing feels very right.

You boast a 'tech tree', I'd like to actually see it. It seems you are simply given two options out of a host of several. For example, when my Archer leveled the first time, I had the option between Tree and Rain (which, by the way, I can already see the uses for). When I reloaded, the options were Rain and Fire Arrow. While some RNG is nice, I don't know if I much care for this. I'd prefer to have an after-combat screen where my characters level up and I get to make decisions based on where in the skill tree the character is. They can be mutually exclusive choices, if you want, a branching list of options that lock other branches off once selected sounds pretty cool in fact. Hopefully, this is one of those 'to be done, using this now as a convenience' things.

You don't introduce any of the Ranger or Paladin abilities like you did the others, and the descriptions are... vague.

For an early release game, this is definitely not bad, and I consider the twenty bucks well spent. However, there's a LOT of areas that need some love, as I'm sure your development team are well aware of, particularly in the area of conveyance.

EDIT: Playing around a bit with the Whirlwind spell... wow, this really IS one of the stronger abilities. Basically, if your enemy is behind cover, unless it's like a building or something, you can knock the cover over onto the enemy guaranteed, which deals serious damage. This is your 'cover buster' ability, one which has quite a clever implementation... if I can ever figure out how to aim it properly. I do like the cooldown on the Mage's bigger spells.

Silfir

2018-04-27, 05:28 AM

I'll be honest, I only got as far as "Fantasy XCOM" and "Here's some keys" and got my copy/paste on. I used QTBF7-T4M8C-JZWQ0.

I should get around to playing it fairly soon.

Kaptin Keen

2018-04-27, 08:34 AM

Can I grab QTBF7-T4M8C-JZWQ0? Tnx =)

That was already taken, so I took the last one. I wonder if that counts as 'a lot of interest', and more will be posted?

Maryring

2018-04-27, 09:12 AM

Further thoughts.

Consider having the prologue act as a more extended tutorial, designing the stages so that each class gets a chance to shine. The difficulty has to be reduced because while it's perfectly fair to have a difficult game, you want to ease people into the difficulty. And this game is already harder than XCOM since only two of your squad has ranged attacks, and enemies even in the early game can survive a single ranged attack. Coupled with the much lower accuracy in general and the weirdness of cover (an almost 90% angle flank still had only a 25% chance to hit) and a higher number of enemies and the prologue turns into a meatgrinder where your health is constantly whittled down and there's nothing you can do about it except pray to RNGsus. As long as the Prologue is there it will be what people play first, so you need to design the prologue to be welcoming and give people a chance to learn the game and make mistakes. Perhaps give everyone two potions to start with as a hotfix, but that's just a band aid suggestion.

The double-click to activate skills... is bad. Because of it my ranger managed to hit (and miss) a crate right next to her twice, before she pulled a tree over herself for an instant KO. Keep it for overwatch, but for everything else make us select a target.

The AI seems incredibly defensive. Which, fair enough. It makes the game harder. But I still find it a bit strange for goblins and undead to be so... intelligent. Maybe storywise you could play up that they are, in fact, intelligent? This isn't a big thing though. Just something that made me scratch my head a little.

I like the world map. Wandering around, getting into random encounters and all that jazz. That's a clever addition to the XCOM formula. One that on first impressions impresses me. Could do with a tiny tutorial though.

I can't help but feel it'd be better if the barbarian lines were Cockney and not standard barbarian speak.

adamzeira

2018-04-27, 10:19 PM

This game is *extremely* relevant to my interests. Relevant enough that I dropped the money down on buying Early Release. To give you an idea, this is the second game I have *EVER* purchased Early Release on. The real sale point for me, in addition to the game itself combining my favorite genres, was native Linux compatibility, so I don't have to fiddle around with WINE.

That's so great to hear man :) The linux community has been SO supportive, it boggles the mind why more games don't develop for it. The build process isn't even difficult if you use Unity.

Right on the money regarding the polish - we're a small group of fans with an ambitious idea, so it's a little rough around the edges, but through EA I really hope it'll shape up to be a game worthy to compete with even triple A titles.

UI clarity and showing what skills will do (we call it Ghosting) - we're working on it. It'll be a few weeks but it's one of the things we want the most

Absolutely correct that the skill selection is a temporary thing. We're still debating with what exactly we want
My personal opinion is that skill trees are tricky, because by their nature they limit a character to selecting a branch and acting as the developer intended that branch to act. It's a bit boring imo
I always thought the Heroes 3 system was amazing, and not even fully utilized. Where you're given 2 random skills to choose from every level up. And you can have warrior heroes selecting expert magic schools, and it's really beneficial to them in some ways. Makes for a lot of combinations
I think it wasn't even making the most of things, because you always had favorite skills, like you'd always take logistics and earth magic because you want mass slow. and even if you don't have the Slow spell, you know you're going to get it by conquering a town or two
I wonder - if spells were much more rare, whether the skill selection process would become more adaptable. Imagine starting a game, seeing you have the Haste spell in your starting town - and because spells are more rare, you select Air magic as a skill, to adapt to the situation. Would make playthroughs much more varied

But these are just my opinions for the sake of debate :) most of the team definitely wants skill trees so it'll probably happen. I think it's even promised somewhere

We're planning on putting out a build roughly every Monday, you'll see some of the things brought up pretty soon :)

That was already taken, so I took the last one. I wonder if that counts as 'a lot of interest', and more will be posted?

Yeah, the feedback here is incredibly helpful, I'm sure I can get more keys. Will post them soon

Consider having the prologue act as a more extended tutorial, designing the stages so that each class gets a chance to shine. The difficulty has to be reduced because while it's perfectly fair to have a difficult game, you want to ease people into the difficulty. And this game is already harder than XCOM since only two of your squad has ranged attacks, and enemies even in the early game can survive a single ranged attack. Coupled with the much lower accuracy in general and the weirdness of cover (an almost 90% angle flank still had only a 25% chance to hit) and a higher number of enemies and the prologue turns into a meatgrinder where your health is constantly whittled down and there's nothing you can do about it except pray to RNGsus. As long as the Prologue is there it will be what people play first, so you need to design the prologue to be welcoming and give people a chance to learn the game and make mistakes. Perhaps give everyone two potions to start with as a hotfix, but that's just a band aid suggestion.

We're definitely tweaking the prologue to be more forgiving. The missions themselves, and also so heroes revive after each mission (but with a warning message that this is NOT how it works in the campaign)

I love the idea of making the entire prologue act as an extended tutorial

Thanks so much for the feedback guys. Keep it coming. I'll try to get more keys for when a new build is up after the weekend

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-04-28, 05:36 AM

We're definitely tweaking the prologue to be more forgiving. The missions themselves, and also so heroes revive after each mission (but with a warning message that this is NOT how it works in the campaign)

I love the idea of making the entire prologue act as an extended tutorialSome ideas on how to do this:

Instead of reviving between levels, if a character dies, you get a new level 1 character of the same class and a different name, to point out that it isn't the same character. Maybe even a snarky "Gee, funny how convenient it is to find someone of the exact same class of the person we just lost..." for some tongue-in-cheek almost fourth-wall breaking humor. This makes it plainly clear that your characters do *NOT* revive, however for purposes of the prologue, we don't want you having less than four characters in the party and you have no other way of hiring new characters between missions in the prologue.

Some ideas on how to gentle out the learning curve:

* Introduce each mechanic individually as you progress. This is kind of why a skill tree or between mission screen is typically better than just clicking a button, because you can have a little five second .gif showing the animation and what it does.

* On the same vein as introducing each mechanic individually as you progress, you pick up two new classes with completely different abilities, with absolutely no clue what any of them do. I'm still not sure what Grapnel Hook does.

* A couple of 'set pieces' in each mission highlighting a particular tactic of maneuver which would be a particularly effective use of a skill. I mean, the whole 'collapse the tunnel' thing in the second mission just begs 'fireball me please' because not only does the fire do stupid amounts of damage per turn (which might need to be revised) to the actual structure itself, but it also ignites and damages every turn every enemy coming out of it. It really trivializes that set piece. A simple statement from the wizard along the lines of "My calculations show a high statistical probability of being able to bring down the load-bearing infrastructure with a single fireball spell, as it would certainly ignite the support beams, and also any goblins who try to pass through them" would go a ways to educating the player without hammering him with 'Hey, Listen!' . Maybe tweak the skill offerings a bit to make sure the characters get certain skills to demonstrate them and their effectiveness. Like making sure your Ranger gets Rain so that when your Wizard gets Fireball, you'll have a way of putting out the fires as well as setting them or something.

* Part of what I think the problem with that town mission is that, despite that tutorial mission showing you kick, it doesn't really translate very well from 'kicking a box' to 'kicking a lamp over on an enemy'. Your melee characters seem like they are pretty much built to beat people behind cover, because they can explicitly use the cover against them. Especially the totally-not-a-barbarian's charge ability. Giving players practice with the new mechanics that differentiates it so much from XCOM is going to be key in not only helping them understand the differences you have built into the game, but also a more enjoyable experience as they learn to exploit properly use the mechanics available to them to do bad things to bad people.

TheTeaMustFlow

2018-04-28, 10:17 AM

Anyway, I'm sure you guys will love it, and I want to give something back to the comic/community/forum that's given me so much. So here are some free keys for the game. If you take one please say so and I'll update the list so others don't waste their time

RK32I-FYFX2-5FHPA
LAE7K-WCQ6F-G246B
WM66N-RFCF2-G6DYR
K3XY6-P7CBG-0Z4C0
9TKTJ-Y9ZIF-IBNR5
QTBF7-T4M8C-JZWQ0
TJHZZ-J4E3B-2804X
ZH7B3-63IDA-CZDDD
EGEP3-DJVX5-VFLPD
6JQP2-7IR73-65WQW

Just so you know, both uncrossed keys have in fact been used.

If there's a lot of demand I'll post some more

*Smiles hopefully*.

warty goblin

2018-04-28, 12:28 PM

Just so you know, both uncrossed keys have in fact been used.

*Smiles hopefully*.

I'd take one too, if more are on the offing. Fantasy XCOM is right up my street.

Leecros

2018-04-28, 03:41 PM

I'll be watching intently for new keys myself. This certainly seems like something that would be up my alley.

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-04-28, 04:37 PM

adamzeira

2018-04-28, 04:41 PM

We want to put out a new build on Sunday or Monday with a few fixes, I'll post extra keys once it's out

adamzeira

2018-04-28, 04:58 PM

Starting Monday, I should start recording a Let's Try of this game, hopefully after the next patch comes through, which might be helpful for some people on the fence getting a good idea of the gameplay presented so far. I will *try* to get the first video up Monday as well, we'll see.

That's awesome :)
If you let us know in advance or tag @FortTriumph we'll do what we can to help, retweet, host and all that

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-04-28, 05:23 PM

That's awesome :)
If you let us know in advance or tag @FortTriumph we'll do what we can to help, retweet, host and all that

It's going to be a pre-recorded Youtube series, not livestreamed, but I'll definitely link to it in a post to this thread when the first episode is released.

Eldan

2018-04-30, 02:41 AM

Well, this looks cool.

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-04-30, 10:23 AM

First episode is up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEkXhe1_8Io

adamzeira

2018-04-30, 10:26 AM

It's going to be a pre-recorded Youtube series, not livestreamed, but I'll definitely link to it in a post to this thread when the first episode is released.

New build with some tweaks going up in a bit. Play it if you want to have an Overwatch indicator, adjusted prologue difficulty and a few other neat things

Will post a few more keys once the update is up (in an hour I expect). I think I'll post 5 now, and 5 with the next update, which will be a weekly thing (every Sunday/Monday)

You can also buy the game, it's only $20 :) but I'll be posting a few keys, just going to space them out between updates

edit: Keys posted

warty goblin

2018-04-30, 11:21 AM

Nabbed J76XQ-HE53D-V6749 (the first one). I'm looking forwards to giving it a whirl this evening, and will let you know what I think.

TheTeaMustFlow

2018-04-30, 01:20 PM

Grabbed A24IN-XQ4BM-0XN8Z. Should be able to give it a whirl tomorrow.

Thanks very much!

gmoyes

2018-04-30, 01:34 PM

And I just picked up DXLKY-YHX29-IWL55. Been starting to get a let's play channel up with my friends and this game is right up my alley. Thanks a lot!

Thrantar

2018-04-30, 02:17 PM

This is of interest to me, so I just grabbed key 7KCF7-VGMQ5-HKZMN. I'll post feedback sometime later this week.

Mabn

2018-04-30, 02:29 PM

I took WVV2Z-26F2D-52Q4Q. I want to play at least 20 hours before giving my opinions, so it may take several days.

NeoVid

2018-04-30, 09:13 PM

I just played a couple hours of the open world mode, and found it to be much easier and more fun than the prologue. (Which is a bit of a problem, the intro shouldn't be the part hard enough to scare players away) I also found the dialogue to be better done than the prologue's. It's left me looking forward to seeing more scenes with the undead army, (Other terms they should use for themselves: "Living-Impaired" "Differently Animated") and I was also impressed by the incidental things, like the well encounter (what, no Gazebo?) and the queen's pun jar.

I think in my first post, I forgot to say how much I like the idea that all terrain is targetable in this game, and an early enemy in this mode showed me just how important that is... and how good your AI appears to be. In the very first encounter I had today, a skeleton kicked one of my team into a lamppost, stunning her... and also knocking over the lamppost onto the party member using it as cover, stunning her too! That was honestly so impressive that I think a moment like that should be scripted in the tutorials, since I sure didn't realize the potential of using the environment until then. Sadly, my later attempt to pull a boss off a cliff missed...

Unfortunately, I also ran into an issue. After I finished the spider cave, the "Onward" button did nothing, and I was stuck there until alt+f4ing out of the game. Did I ironically hit a bug after defeating the Spider Queen?

adamzeira

2018-05-01, 05:14 AM

..."Living-Impaired" "Differently Animated" ...
Haha, those are awesome. Implementing them somewhere with your permission :)

Unfortunately, I also ran into an issue. After I finished the spider cave, the "Onward" button did nothing, and I was stuck there until alt+f4ing out of the game. Did I ironically hit a bug after defeating the Spider Queen?

That's a standard, if ironic bug :P I'll look into it, do you happen to have not-run-the-game since then? If so there's a log file I'd really like to see at

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow\Cookie Byte Entertainment\Fort Triumph\output_log.txt

email it to [email protected]

Or use the debug console to send a report (tap an invisible button on the top-left 3 times, it'll bring up a bunch of options, one of them is to send a report)

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-01, 10:49 AM

The house next door is being renovated or something, I can barely hear myself think, so no recording of the next episode today, hopefully tomorrow will turn out better.

mythmonster2

2018-05-01, 02:08 PM

This sounds quite interesting, are there any more keys left?

NeoVid

2018-05-01, 04:05 PM

That's a standard, if ironic bug :P I'll look into it, do you happen to have not-run-the-game since then?

Or use the debug console to send a report (tap an invisible button on the top-left 3 times, it'll bring up a bunch of options, one of them is to send a report)

Doh! Fired it up again to see where the last save before the freeze put me. Sounds like that would mean the log you need is overwritten.

Secret debug button, you say? I'll remember that bit.

Mabn

2018-05-01, 10:37 PM

just a minor note, but I keep opening the menu when I try to cancel an ability

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-02, 09:32 AM

Whelp... Episode Two (https://youtu.be/YSsWOlW4Lxg) of my Let's Play is up! Mission went more or less the way I wanted it to go.

As feedback for the devs, could you please indicate how an item is going to fall if it is being hit on a diagonal? This is the second time in as many missions that this has worked out in an unexpected way.

adamzeira

2018-05-02, 12:04 PM

This sounds quite interesting, are there any more keys left?

Will release a few more in the next patch (Monday if there are no delays)

Can't keep doing that forever though. And it would be cool if the people who take it are ones who need it (If you're a kid, or a poor college student and $20 is out of your reach). So be nice to the community and purchase if you can afford it :) It's not very expensive and I guarantee it'll have good value

just a minor note, but I keep opening the menu when I try to cancel an ability

It seems when an ability is selected pressing Esc does de-select it. What's happening exactly?

Mabn

2018-05-02, 02:02 PM

It seems when an ability is selected pressing Esc does de-select it. What's happening exactly?
Well, when I run the game it's not perfectly responsive, probably thanks to my computer. So to do anything I hit the relevant key 3-4 times. In the case of canceling an ability, hitting escape once causes you to cancel, but hitting escape twice causes you to go to the menu. It is easy to then hit resume and keep playing, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

Edit: so after I defeat the Lich, how do I go do something else? I pressed campaign again and it took me back to the Lich dungeon, so that one wasn't it I'm guessing.
Also, how do I move potions from one character to another?

adamzeira

2018-05-03, 04:58 AM

Well, when I run the game it's not perfectly responsive, probably thanks to my computer. So to do anything I hit the relevant key 3-4 times. In the case of canceling an ability, hitting escape once causes you to cancel, but hitting escape twice causes you to go to the menu. It is easy to then hit resume and keep playing, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

Edit: so after I defeat the Lich, how do I go do something else? I pressed campaign again and it took me back to the Lich dungeon, so that one wasn't it I'm guessing.
Also, how do I move potions from one character to another?

In the main menu instead of pressing Continue go to Campaigns, the option with the picture of an undead titled "Fort Triumph: Short War", it starts the full campaign

Can't move potions yet unfortunately. Inventory, artifacts and better potions usability in tactical is something that's on the top of the to-do list. It'll be the first major feature added I believe, with a bunch of content and the finished first campaign

Knaight

2018-05-04, 01:33 AM

I've played enough to start offering opinions (completed the Prologue, Short War, inasmuch as I reached the end of the content currently done). So:

First things first, I had fun. The humor largely worked, the UI was mostly helpful post patches, and the general style of game worked for me. I also really liked the way the overworld worked, and the whole dynamic of picking fights carefully. The whole XCOM meets Mount and Blade style there works.

That said, there were a few points where the amount of information given was a bit minimal. How far things would move when shoves was a continual point of mystery, and there was some weird collision behavior in terms of diagonal shoves around corners and similar. Projecting an arrow that tells you how far and how things will move when hovering over with various movement mechanics would be really helpful.

TheTeaMustFlow

2018-05-04, 09:18 AM

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-04, 12:52 PM

TheTeaMustFlow

2018-05-04, 02:33 PM

First attempt at Litch: complete and total failure. Pally died when I got too greedy and triggered a pack of archers while trying to take care of a mob who went onto the top of the wall (which I maintain should be a bug). The main room fared... poorly. Everyone was pretty much one-shot. The two archer skeletons did go down, because Fireball, but the two melee guys just mopped up everything I had, and the litch couldn't buy a miss with a dragon's hoard with his spam-happy fireballs.

And you can see it all here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ1Yh2KJs-w).

Oof, that was nasty. Really shows how much difference the procedural generation can make - on my playthrough, I got rather more forgiving enemy placements (and, I think, less archers and more melee guys) on the corridor encounters, and got through pretty much without a hitch.

Have to say though, I think that final fight was winnable with only a moderate amount of luck, even with the losses you'd taken. Have the rangers grapple arrow both the mooks at the back, and that should stun everyone but the boss. I get the idea that fight is basically designed to show off the shove/stun mechanics - the opfor is very tough, but starts awfully positioned.

Also, just so you know: at 24:26 (https://youtu.be/VQ1Yh2KJs-w?t=1484), you didn't miss the Goblin... you stabbed the pillar :smallbiggrin:. (UI could do a better job in that situation, to be honest.)

Mabn

2018-05-04, 02:52 PM

Oof, that was nasty. Really shows how much difference the procedural generation can make - on my playthrough, I got rather more forgiving enemy placements (and, I think, less archers and more melee guys) on the corridor encounters, and got through pretty much without a hitch.

Have to say though, I think that final fight was winnable with only a moderate amount of luck, even with the losses you'd taken. Have the rangers grapple arrow both the mooks at the back, and that should stun everyone but the boss. I get the idea that fight is basically designed to show off the shove/stun mechanics - the opfor is very tough, but starts awfully positioned.

Also, just so you know: at 24:26 (https://youtu.be/VQ1Yh2KJs-w?t=1484), you didn't miss the Goblin... you stabbed the pillar :smallbiggrin:. (UI could do a better job in that situation, to be honest.)
Weird, I didn't use a shove or stun the whole fight. I just retreated immediately back in the corridor to separate out the melee guys and then stacked accuracy debuffs on the ranged dudes. With the health and damage discrepancies in that fight the idea of attacking when I could be attacked back honestly didn't occur to me.

TheTeaMustFlow

2018-05-04, 03:04 PM

Weird, I didn't use a shove or stun the whole fight. I just retreated immediately back in the corridor to separate out the melee guys and then stacked accuracy debuffs on the ranged dudes. With the health and damage discrepancies in that fight the idea of attacking when I could be attacked back honestly didn't occur to me.

Uh, the point of stunning them is that they can't fire back.

Mabn

2018-05-04, 03:16 PM

Uh, the point of stunning them is that they can't fire back.
If you miss, they can wipe your party. Given my usual accuracy, that is far too real a can.

adamzeira

2018-05-07, 07:24 AM

That said, there were a few points where the amount of information given was a bit minimal. How far things would move when shoves was a continual point of mystery, and there was some weird collision behavior in terms of diagonal shoves around corners and similar. Projecting an arrow that tells you how far and how things will move when hovering over with various movement mechanics would be really helpful.

Great suggestion, added to the build coming out tomorrow. We were planning on adding an indication, but your idea of adding the number of tiles it would move I think would be a significant step up. Thanks :)

As feedback for the devs, could you please indicate how an item is going to fall if it is being hit on a diagonal? This is the second time in as many missions that this has worked out in an unexpected way.

The exact way in which it'll fall requires predicting physics which is surprisingly harder than the games actual physics (which are also surprisingly more complicated because they're tile-based as opposed to real ones). We're on it, and for now adding some UI so the movement makes sense, and tells you how many tiles an object will be moved

I also found the way xp is distributed to be a little irritating - having it overwhelmingly reliant on getting the killing blow hurts less aggressive characters. It also makes for odd situations where you're actively making bad tactical decisions to maximise xp, avoiding kills with temporary characters to avoid them stealing it, etc. I'd much rather have it be equally distributed between all party members.

Also, is there any way to swap items between characters? I couldn't see it, and if it's not there it would really be nice to have. Just read the posts above, evidently not in yet but planned. Fair enough.

Killing blows - I like the idea. That or give everyone exp for doing anything (taking damage, healing, etc). But that has all sorts of issues. Will bring it up with the team

Item swapping - the first major patch, about a month from now, will focus on artifacts and potions. I agree it's a clunky system right now :/

Thanks so so much for the feedback guys. A new build goes up tomorrow evening with a bunch of your suggestions

GloatingSwine

2018-05-07, 09:06 AM

I also found the way xp is distributed to be a little irritating - having it overwhelmingly reliant on getting the killing blow hurts less aggressive characters. It also makes for odd situations where you're actively making bad tactical decisions to maximise xp, avoiding kills with temporary characters to avoid them stealing it, etc. I'd much rather have it be equally distributed between all party members.

This soon leads to the old Fire Emblem trick of parking all your characters in the enemy's personal space to keep them trapped until the unit you want to get the kill comes along.

Having the lion's share of XP awarded for the killing blow leads to one of two outcomes. People play gamey to equalise it or they start to rely more and more on whoever runs away with the XP lead the first few levels.

It may be better to have the XP all go into a shared pool and let the player spend it between battles (or have a catchup mechanism using another resource the player can reasonably obtain like Warriors games have the training ground).

lord_khaine

2018-05-07, 10:52 AM

This soon leads to the old Fire Emblem trick of parking all your characters in the enemy's personal space to keep them trapped until the unit you want to get the kill comes along.

Having the lion's share of XP awarded for the killing blow leads to one of two outcomes. People play gamey to equalise it or they start to rely more and more on whoever runs away with the XP lead the first few levels.

It may be better to have the XP all go into a shared pool and let the player spend it between battles (or have a catchup mechanism using another resource the player can reasonably obtain like Warriors games have the training ground).

Oh yeah.. while i love the creativity found in for example the disgaia games, then i also still hate the killing-blow bit of xp management with the fury of a thousand suns.

As this gentleman mention it easily leads to a downward spiral of one character hugging all the xp constantly, and makes it a bitch if you want a even partly equal team.

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-07, 05:14 PM

Episode 4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa86bdzZASI) is up!

So, did better getting to the Litch, but lost my Barbarian due to being focus-fired by the Litch who can't seem to ever miss, despite heavy cover on both shots.

ImperatorV

2018-05-07, 08:23 PM

This looks interesting. Unless new keys come out I'll probably wait until it's more polished before playing though.

adamzeira

2018-05-08, 12:29 PM

New build up, added a few more keys

Leecros

2018-05-08, 01:13 PM

I picked up the CFVH9-LHAP4-A5PE3 key, because this definitely seems like something up my alley!

Lvl 2 Expert

2018-05-08, 01:43 PM

Claimed EKR0V-LN42K-DHRP3, thanks a lot!

Thomas Cardew

2018-05-08, 02:04 PM

Took QL206-RAXIZ-2CTYR, and it looks like someone took 0TMVA-AMNI2-IZ592 without saying anything. Thanks!

Dienekes

2018-05-09, 05:17 PM

Well looks like they've all been taken. Ahh well.

Anyway, it looks fun. And I hope it does well, and maybe I'll try it later.

Lvl 2 Expert

2018-05-11, 03:04 AM

Is there a way to revive falen members, or to use the save function? Or should I reload the last autosave as soon as someone falls? Or is the idea that new members that join are replacements? I'm not too familiar with the genre conventions.

JeenLeen

2018-05-11, 02:25 PM

I hope to get the last code this evening, though if someone else gets it first I reckon I'll wait to see if you'll be posting more. Looks fun, and I don't even really know what XCOM is.

adamzeira

2018-05-12, 06:38 AM

Would love feedback guys. It's how I convince people in the company to keep posting keys here :)

The feedback doesn't even need to be about gameplay - would love to hear which parts of the dialogue you liked more, which parts less, and how you'd change them. And if you liked the prologue or the campaign more

Is there a way to revive falen members, or to use the save function? Or should I reload the last autosave as soon as someone falls? Or is the idea that new members that join are replacements? I'm not too familiar with the genre conventions.

Yeah heroes who die are dead permanently. The idea is you want to feel a real loss when something like that happens, or you can't create real attacment. Something XCOM did very well. It's a core part of the experience, though we're thinking of ways to augment it because it's a little different in FT (in FT, maybe because you get dialogues, you end up getting a lot more attached to the characters. In XCOM a bunch of your rookies can die, you only get attached to them later on when they have significant levels, at which point they're also sturdier and don't die as easily)

I hope to get the last code this evening, though if someone else gets it first I reckon I'll wait to see if you'll be posting more. Looks fun, and I don't even really know what XCOM is.

They were gone super fast :/ but I'll post more next week with the new build. Usually on Monday, Tuesday if there's a delay

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-12, 12:53 PM

Yeah heroes who die are dead permanently. The idea is you want to feel a real loss when something like that happens, or you can't create real attacment. Something XCOM did very well. It's a core part of the experience, though we're thinking of ways to augment it because it's a little different in FT (in FT, maybe because you get dialogues, you end up getting a lot more attached to the characters. In XCOM a bunch of your rookies can die, you only get attached to them later on when they have significant levels, at which point they're also sturdier and don't die as easily) Here's a bit of feedback about this system.

On the one hand, I absolutely love that your characters CAN die, and WILL if you make a tactical blunder, or just if the RNG dislikes you that day. HOWEVER, the thing XCOM had going for it is that you had a whole *roster* of people available to you. One soldier dying was bad, especially if it was a Colonel, but ultimately you had others who could slot in. You could rotate around your stock of soldiers, so that no matter what mission turned up, you had someone who could at least perform the functions you needed. The wound system encouraged this, because even a light hit meant someone was in the medic bay for a few days, so if something else turned up in that time, you had to sub in someone else anyway. Who then got experience. And thus your 'second string' was born.

This does not seem to be the case in Fort Triumph, where you have the typical D&D trope of 'we have four intrepid heroes going boldly forth', but when you lose someone, not only is it pretty expensive to replace, but they get replaced with a newbie, whose skill options may be totally awful and you won't know until those options come up, and you have no real ways of cycling or holding onto potentially useful adventurers on a roster somewhere. You have what is available for hire from the Tavern... and that's it.

Maybe there's a mechanic I'm not seeing, but that seems like death is far more punitively harsh than in an XCOM game where a rookie with a grenade could still absolutely turn the tide of even a high-end battle if that grenade was used in the right location. His weapons were still the same weapons as everyone else's. Maybe he wasn't as accurate with it, maybe he was more prone to panicking, and maybe he didn't have any extra skills... but it was a warm body with a weapon that did relevant damage and a grenade.

One of the classic tropes in D&D is resurrection. Rob has played with it several times now. How about, instead of a recruiting hall where you get newbies, you have a temple with a cleric who can res your fallen allies... at a significant cost. And by significant, we're talking (Recruiting Cost * level squared) sort of ramping up cost. And in addition to that, require some kind of rare (or STUPIDLY expensive) drop. Or rather, how about 'in addition to', rather than 'instead of', and an option to dismiss a party member who isn't living up to his standards.

I'd also like to revisit a request for a more visible skill tree that has at least some player interaction, instead of RNG deciding if I have a useful character or a mostly worthless one.

They were gone super fast :/ but I'll post more next week with the new build. Usually on Monday, Tuesday if there's a delayYou know, you are perhaps the most generous indie studio I have seen yet. Most will release maybe one wave of keys, if that, and that's it. I also wonder how many of these keys are actually going to people who want to play the game seriously vs how many are taking them simply because they are available and hey... free stuff. It seems like a larger percentage of the keys seem to be taken by people who don't even bother to post that they've taken it, which is a pretty good sign that those people are simply taking them to take free stuff you are offering. I mean, the publicity thing is probably worth it in its own right, but I'm wondering if you are hitting the point of diminishing returns with the free keys.

Thomas Cardew

2018-05-12, 04:31 PM

I also wonder how many of these keys are actually going to people who want to play the game seriously vs how many are taking them simply because they are available and hey... free stuff. It seems like a larger percentage of the keys seem to be taken by people who don't even bother to post that they've taken it, which is a pretty good sign that those people are simply taking them to take free stuff you are offering. I mean, the publicity thing is probably worth it in its own right, but I'm wondering if you are hitting the point of diminishing returns with the free keys.

He has decent point. You might want to post you have X keys available and then have people send you a DM to cut down on random people taking them.

It could also just be timing. I didn't get a chance to install and play till the weekend. Even then I barely got through the tutorial and cleared the spider dungeon. I'd suggest maybe realize the keys on Friday instead of Monday, then checking for feedback on Monday morning.

Few thoughts. I got mildly irritated during the tutorial when I was scrolling the screen around using the mouse to edge instead of wasd and the quest wouldn't advance. I couldn't figure out why. Something similar happened with the select hero after you free the barbarian. I clicked on the portrait on the portrait instead of hitting tab, and was frustrated when I could see all her available moves but not doing anything because I hadn't clicked 'Tab'. I feel if you're going to offer multiple control options, they should all fulfill the quest conditions. Tie advancement to the result not how someone got there. Mildly annoyed is not how I should feel with the game in the first 15 minutes.

As I think someone else mentioned. The troll felt weird. Everything was on the rails until the very last turn. I'd suggest either making that explicit too or flashing dialogue about 'You've got it from here'. Maybe some joke about the DM/Narrator going for more coffee/pizza/beer and you finish this fight.

I've been enjoying the humor and dialogue so far. The spider society joke made me chuckle. I need to play more and see more, but I'm worried that it needs to played straight a bit more. If you're always subverting tropes etc, it'll start to feel stale and predictable. Like the fortuneteller crystal, I would have left off the barbarian not being able to tell the difference.

That said I really am enjoying it so far.

EDIT: Been playing some more tonight when I time, had a bug in the middle of a fight. The one just after crossing the guarded bridge. I moved my ranger to cover, shot at the troll across the river with the grappling arrow. The animations happened; then nothing. I could move the camera, the music still plays, and the stun stars still spin, but I can't select my heros or move anyone. Screenshot. (https://imgur.com/a/PMKWEKN)

lord_khaine

2018-05-13, 05:01 AM

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-13, 02:15 PM

I have not played the game myself, only seen a video of it. But some bits seemed a little weird.
Especially the inclusion of a closer melee focus in a x-com styled game.

Are shields providing the same degree of protection as cover? Can you make your tank hunker down in overwatch, providing cover to an archer/mage behind while also slashing at the first enemy to close in?
Because i suspect that would provide much needed depth to what currently looks like a game of overwatch.

There are no shields, but all melee characters *automatically* have overwatch within melee range, and all melee characters can Brace to take half damage until the next turn, although that takes an action. These two things make melee characters *far* more viable than one might initially see. If you want to look up my videos, you'll see that in action.

Indeed, a viable tactic is to double-move into being adjacent to a ranged character, because a ranged character *cannot* fire when in melee with an enemy. So either he moves, and gets overwatched, or he goes into overwatch himself, in which case he gets hammered. Of course, dashing forward might reveal another pack before you are ready, but that's just part of the XCOM charm.

Thomas Cardew

2018-05-13, 04:56 PM

Bug happened again. (https://imgur.com/a/J1MJHXA) Different fight, same tile set. Used the grappling arrow to pull the top left troll diagonally to bottom right. It does the animation but the controls never pop up again.

EDIT: So I've been able to reproduce with ogres several times. Just did a map with spiders but the nothing happened. I've submitted a couple bug reports. Also had some visual glitches like ogres falling through the map after being pushed.

lord_khaine

2018-05-13, 05:08 PM

There are no shields, but all melee characters *automatically* have overwatch within melee range, and all melee characters can Brace to take half damage until the next turn, although that takes an action. These two things make melee characters *far* more viable than one might initially see. If you want to look up my videos, you'll see that in action.

Indeed, a viable tactic is to double-move into being adjacent to a ranged character, because a ranged character *cannot* fire when in melee with an enemy. So either he moves, and gets overwatched, or he goes into overwatch himself, in which case he gets hammered. Of course, dashing forward might reveal another pack before you are ready, but that's just part of the XCOM charm.

It is actually your video i watched. But i kinda lost interest because it seemed like mostly a lot of overwatch spamming.

deuterio12

2018-05-13, 08:59 PM

Alent

2018-05-14, 06:22 AM

I'd be interested in trying this and devoting some stream time on my Saturday stream to it. Longtime S/RPG fan, although I can't claim to have more than 2~4 viewers on my stream. I just finished up a run of Final Fantasy 1 Restored, and am thinking to run Royal Stone next (an obscure gamegear S/RPG from Sega), but I'd be down for exploring this instead.

You know Fire Emblem? For a lot of time it was infamous for being a tactical RPG with perma-death. But even the first game had the chance to ressurect a dead ally, although it was only in one of the last maps and you had to meet a bunch of extra requirements.

Still for a lot of time it was a quite niche series, to the point it only came outside of Japan by the 7th title or so, and only had a limited if loyal audience.

Then there was Fire Emblem Awakening, where for the first time perma-death was optional. And suddenly the game's popularity EXPLODED, to the point it went from a niche franchise Nintendo took decades to take from Japan and was about to abandon forever to something they can keep pumping out new titles every year including a phone game.

Now Fire Emblem Awakening did a bunch of other stuff right, but being able to disable perma-death was huge. You satisfy both sides of players, and should be pretty easy to code.

Kinda like the X-Com reboot had optional Ironman mode. Players can choose to be forced to accept their decisions, or they can not play ironman and still be able to spam save-load.

I don't think that's quite accurate. The SNES Fire Emblems failed to come west because Kaga era FE wasn't shy about mature plot trappings like gods, rape, incest, the mass ritual sacrifice of children, etc. Translation would've had to censor huge swaths of the story just to get them past 90's era NoA censorship guidelines. (Although Mystery of the Emblem was tame compared to both Grandbell titles.) The exportability was made worse by most of the post-Kaga FE games being mediocre at best. S/RPGs work at their best when they're either "Nintendo hard", or social tier fun like Shining Force or FFT. After Kaga left, FE turned into something very different that tried to straddle the line between casual fun and Nintendo Hard at the same time, and succeeded at being neither.

(Edit: Addressing permadeath relative to Fort Triumph and in general below this point)

With that said, some S/RPGs have experimented with some really cool mechanics that make death mean something without having permadeath. Shining Force 3's friendship system and optional objectives make a great combo for making you feel connected to your characters. The things you do to grind friendship in that game not only build personal investment, they actually build a story in your mind where those characters have a reason to trust each other.

I've been mulling over permadeath and it's value in gaming for a while now, since I want to go indie and make S/RPGs, too. My overall conclusion is that permadeath has it's place, but it doesn't actually help create attachments to a character- it can only test the player's attachments to a character or goal. I don't do no death runs in Fire Emblem because I like the characters, I do no death runs because the game awards you for it at the end. I only care about a few of those characters- the rest are just padding to flesh out the game and usually end up warming the bench.

The trick to building attachment to a character is to develop a player's expectations for that character. Permadeath really doesn't factor into it in either direction. Consider the new Battletech game, where Dekker dying to headshots is a meme, but people are upset if their favorite recruit that they've been building up into a veteran merely gets wounded. This is due to the character suddenly being unable to match the player's expectations- now that character is unavailable for some time after the battle, and this affects the player's ability to farm C-bills to meet all those monthly expenses.

Many things can build that value- story and dialog, personal time invested via grinding, etc. It shouldn't be too hard to find places where the expectations of that value can be failed by defeat in a way other than permadeath.

deuterio12

2018-05-14, 07:50 AM

I don't think that's quite accurate. The SNES Fire Emblems failed to come west because Kaga era FE wasn't shy about mature plot trappings like gods, rape, incest, the mass ritual sacrifice of children, etc. Translation would've had to censor huge swaths of the story just to get them past 90's era NoA censorship guidelines. (Although Mystery of the Emblem was tame compared to both Grandbell titles.) The exportability was made worse by most of the post-Kaga FE games being mediocre at best. S/RPGs work at their best when they're either "Nintendo hard", or social tier fun like Shining Force or FFT. After Kaga left, FE turned into something very different that tried to straddle the line between casual fun and Nintendo Hard at the same time, and succeeded at being neither.

Censorship is a weak excuse. The first Fire Emblem in particular didn't have that much "mature" stuff, the plot was quite barebones, and would've been child's play to censor it (and they still do censor here and there with the modern titles).

Nintendo simply thought the game would have no appeal outside of Japan (a common mistake, see also Xenoblade Chronicles for a more modern title that barely made it to the west). Luckily we had Super Smash brothers coming out with Marth/Roy, which turned out to be super popular, so Nintendo decided that it may be worth

And Blazing Blade was a freaking masterpiece, Koga or no Koga. Three lords (all 3 of which are still pretty popular to the point each got multiple versions in the mobile game), epic story, plenty of drama and dark themes, and it was quite high in the Nintendo Hard scale. If it had been a bad game, Nintendo would've given up on western Fire Emblem right there.

Although I'll agree that from there they started becoming a lot more casual, to the point people meme you can win the console titles with only Ike.

With that said, some S/RPGs have experimented with some really cool mechanics that make death mean something without having permadeath. Shining Force 3's friendship system and optional objectives make a great combo for making you feel connected to your characters. The things you do to grind friendship in that game not only build personal investment, they actually build a story in your mind where those characters have a reason to trust each other.

Cough Fire Emblem's Relationships cough.

I've been mulling over permadeath and it's value in gaming for a while now, since I want to go indie and make S/RPGs, too. My overall conclusion is that permadeath has it's place, but it doesn't actually help create attachments to a character- it can only test the player's attachments to a character or goal. I don't do no death runs in Fire Emblem because I like the characters, I do no death runs because the game awards you for it at the end. I only care about a few of those characters- the rest are just padding to flesh out the game and usually end up warming the bench.

What about the Shadow Dragon remake, where the game rewards you for getting your characters killed? Fans were seriously pissed off about that. Even if they were just bench-warmers, it was unfun and counter-intuitive to suicide most of your team to unlock all the secret levels.

So no, most players don't like seeing their unique characters die permanently, even when they're being rewarded, point.

TheTeaMustFlow

2018-05-14, 10:47 AM

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-14, 12:43 PM

It is actually your video i watched. But i kinda lost interest because it seemed like mostly a lot of overwatch spamming.

Considering perma-death and a lack of roster of second-string characters, do ya blame me?

Knaight

2018-05-14, 01:30 PM

Considering perma-death and a lack of roster of second-string characters, do ya blame me?

It's worth giving some of the forced movement options a shot - overwatch gets you one attack, which is generally 4-8 damage on one target. Forced movement can routinely kill multiple weak targets (kicking small spiders into other small spiders, for instance) or kill individual strong targets despite them being at full HP.

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-14, 01:34 PM

It's worth giving some of the forced movement options a shot - overwatch gets you one attack, which is generally 4-8 damage on one target. Forced movement can routinely kill multiple weak targets (kicking small spiders into other small spiders, for instance) or kill individual strong targets despite them being at full HP.

I did make use of that. Knocking things over on people, chain-hits, that sort of thing. Kicking trees over on people. But when I don't have enemies on screen, I do a lot of overwatch crawling because they definitely seem to have used XCOM's pack-spawning code, and you never know when Suddenly Sectopod might happen.

lord_khaine

2018-05-14, 03:47 PM

Considering perma-death and a lack of roster of second-string characters, do ya blame me?

I can hardly blame you. I hate losing characters as well. Guess its more something to blame on the game.

I suspect the setup of the game should have been a little different than of what it is.
To make the permadeath make sense, then i would almost rather suggest to make the player take the role of guildmaster in an adventure guild.

That would bring the option of managing recruitment and training of backup heroes to the main squad. And perhaps also let killed heroes just get wounded and forced to sit out a couple missions.

Alent

2018-05-14, 03:53 PM

Censorship is a weak excuse. The first Fire Emblem in particular didn't have that much "mature" stuff, the plot was quite barebones, and would've been child's play to censor it (and they still do censor here and there with the modern titles).

Nintendo simply thought the game would have no appeal outside of Japan (a common mistake, see also Xenoblade Chronicles for a more modern title that barely made it to the west). Luckily we had Super Smash brothers coming out with Marth/Roy, which turned out to be super popular, so Nintendo decided that it may be worth

And Blazing Blade was a freaking masterpiece, Koga or no Koga. Three lords (all 3 of which are still pretty popular to the point each got multiple versions in the mobile game), epic story, plenty of drama and dark themes, and it was quite high in the Nintendo Hard scale. If it had been a bad game, Nintendo would've given up on western Fire Emblem right there.

Although I'll agree that from there they started becoming a lot more casual, to the point people meme you can win the console titles with only Ike.

It's not an excuse. It's the simple truth. Kaga left, the series completely rebooted into a different series with a younger target demographic and immediate plans to go west. Someone wisely put the breaks on with Fuuin no Tsurugi because it was a bad game, but Blazing Blade went west and sold more than double the series average sales as a result.

Believe me, when I was younger, I swore up and down it was because the games were too hard. FE fosters an unusual elitism in its fans, I know, I went there in the 90's when I discovered the series. The reality, however, is simply one of cold business and target demographics- Nintendo doesn't have a reputation for selling dark games to kids, they have a family friendly image to maintain in the west and the NoA censorship policies in the 80's and 90's made for that purpose were so ridiculous that people would rather forget they ever happened. (They did, and it made the meteoric rise of the Playstation RPG market even possible.)

Cough Fire Emblem's Relationships cough.

You realize Shining Force 3 released in 1997, right? While it was likely inspired by Seisen no Keifu's marriage system, it easily predates every other relationship system in FE. That's irrelevant to the point I was trying to make for the OP to reinforce your own argument against permadeath- that there are ways to build a sense of loss without permadeath.

Perhaps I should have included the same quote of his you did after the paragraph about FE and NoA censorship.

What about the Shadow Dragon remake, where the game rewards you for getting your characters killed? Fans were seriously pissed off about that. Even if they were just bench-warmers, it was unfun and counter-intuitive to suicide most of your team to unlock all the secret levels.

So no, most players don't like seeing their unique characters die permanently, even when they're being rewarded, point.

Not only did you completely misunderstand what I was saying, you're refuting the wrong thing here. :smallconfused:

We both seem to be in agreement that Permadeath is probably bad for this game, and when I saw the OP say the team felt it added attachment, I wanted to demonstrate that this was not the case by pointing out that death isn't the aspect of the game that builds attachment. The only direct refutation I was making to you was about FE's ability to go west earlier in the franchise. (I haven't even had a chance to play this game yet and it seems self-evident from other people's replies that permadeath is negatively impacting it.)

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-14, 03:56 PM

I can hardly blame you. I hate losing characters as well. Guess its more something to blame on the game.

I suspect the setup of the game should have been a little different than of what it is.
To make the permadeath make sense, then i would almost rather suggest to make the player take the role of guildmaster in an adventure guild.

That would bring the option of managing recruitment and training of backup heroes to the main squad. And perhaps also let killed heroes just get wounded and forced to sit out a couple missions.

Or go with the D&D trope of extremely expensive resurrection. You know, diamond worth such and such plus caster's fees to bring the fallen back from the dead sort of thing. So it is still punishing death, but makes sense from a story perspective that the new guy isn't talking about things he/she never personally experienced.

Honestly, it's a pretty harsh dichotomy, XCOM holds the lives of their soldiers cheap, being in the horror genre of 'anyone at any time can die in a particularly gruesome and horrific manner', while D&D is on the completely other side of the power fantasy spectrum where either Death Is Cheap or Plot Armor exists. Crossing the two isn't an easy challenge, and probably the single greatest challenge the developers have to reconcile.

I'm waiting for the next version release to come out before recording more videos, to see how they have implemented certain things since my last recording. I'll also be doing the first campaign fresh.

lord_khaine

2018-05-14, 04:58 PM

deuterio12

2018-05-15, 09:01 AM

It's not an excuse. It's the simple truth. Kaga left, the series completely rebooted into a different series with a younger target demographic and immediate plans to go west. Someone wisely put the breaks on with Fuuin no Tsurugi because it was a bad game, but Blazing Blade went west and sold more than double the series average sales as a result.

You seem to be implying that the series wasn't rebooting itself literally every title. Gaiden was completely different from Shadow Dragon, then the third title remade the first one changing lots of stuff, then Genealogy of the Holy War went for yet another completely different set of rules and characters, then Akaneia Saga was a bunch of stand-alone episodes streamed by satellite.

Koga leaving meant that Fire Emblem finally managed to stop rebooting itself every title and start polishing the mechanics.

Believe me, when I was younger, I swore up and down it was because the games were too hard. FE fosters an unusual elitism in its fans, I know, I went there in the 90's when I discovered the series. The reality, however, is simply one of cold business and target demographics- Nintendo doesn't have a reputation for selling dark games to kids, they have a family friendly image to maintain in the west and the NoA censorship policies in the 80's and 90's made for that purpose were so ridiculous that people would rather forget they ever happened. (They did, and it made the meteoric rise of the Playstation RPG market even possible.)

It was just cold business as I said. Translating a game takes work and money. And in particular back in the days Nintendo had one dude to translate all their games to english (and he used the chance to take plenty of liberties, like Chrono Trigger's Frog and FF VI Kefka speech patterns). If Nintendo considered a game wouldn't have enough public outside of Japan to make it worth the cost to translate, too bad. Fuuin no Tsurugi didn't get translated either because Nintendo simply thought westerners would have no interest, but luckily super smash brothers showed them the light, westerners fell in love with Marth and Roy right away.

And again, see the first Xenoblade Chronicles. Quite kid-friendly, but Nintendo was all "Na, westerners would not be interested in this" until the players made a big online petition going "Yeah, we want to play this!".

You realize Shining Force 3 released in 1997, right? While it was likely inspired by Seisen no Keifu's marriage system, it easily predates every other relationship system in FE.

C'mon, you can't just go "series X made it first if you completely ignore the other game that actually did it first". Fire Emblem characters getting married after fighting enough together is one of the staples of the series.

That's irrelevant to the point I was trying to make for the OP to reinforce your own argument against permadeath- that there are ways to build a sense of loss without permadeath.

Perhaps I should have included the same quote of his you did after the paragraph about FE and NoA censorship.

Ah, sorry for the confusion then.

Not only did you completely misunderstand what I was saying, you're refuting the wrong thing here. :smallconfused:

We both seem to be in agreement that Permadeath is probably bad for this game, and when I saw the OP say the team felt it added attachment, I wanted to demonstrate that this was not the case by pointing out that death isn't the aspect of the game that builds attachment. The only direct refutation I was making to you was about FE's ability to go west earlier in the franchise. (I haven't even had a chance to play this game yet and it seems self-evident from other people's replies that permadeath is negatively impacting it.)

And I maintain my stance that it was no coincidence that western players seeing Marth and Roy in Super Smash Brothers then going "Who are those characters and why haven't we seen any of their games? Nintendo we want to play those character's games!", rather than your stance of "Fire Emblem was a super grimdark series, and Nintendo would never publish a super grimdark game to the west back in the day, please ignore all those early Final Fantasy titles like FFVI where one of your characters is keeping his dead girlfriend's corpse for years and another is chasing his family's ghosts that were poisoned along the rest of a city just to break a siege".:smalltongue:

TheTeaMustFlow

2018-05-15, 09:38 AM

Yeah.. i would say its the opposite. Permanent death foisters detachment.
When your men can die at any moment. You either reload a lot like in old games such as Baldurs gate, until you have a perfect result.
Or else you begin to see your people as expendable fodder.
But when you can lose someone to a random event, then it encurage you to care less about him/her as a defensive mechanism.

Indeed. When we say we care about our troops in XCOM, that means we care more about them in comparison to our troops in Age of Empires or Command and Conquer. We still care about them a hell of a lot less than our party in Dragon Age or KotOR.

adamzeira

2018-05-15, 10:20 AM

Really interesting discussion. Been swamped with coding things for a new version so haven't posted in a bit, will be replying as soon as that's over

Gonna address just one point:

You know, you are perhaps the most generous indie studio I have seen yet. Most will release maybe one wave of keys, if that, and that's it. I also wonder how many of these keys are actually going to people who want to play the game seriously vs how many are taking them simply because they are available and hey... free stuff. It seems like a larger percentage of the keys seem to be taken by people who don't even bother to post that they've taken it, which is a pretty good sign that those people are simply taking them to take free stuff you are offering. I mean, the publicity thing is probably worth it in its own right, but I'm wondering if you are hitting the point of diminishing returns with the free keys.

Yeah, I agree, but I think there are 2 arguments in favor of giving keys (besides the more emotional "wanting to give back to the community")
1. We're a tiny indie studio with little/no marketing budget, any people here who received keys likely never would have even heard about the game and so couldn't have bought it (but as you said that has diminishing returns)
2. Clear feedback like the kind you've been giving is really valuable - it's worth it to give out a key to get a players detailed experience so you know what to change and the next dozen players have more fun.
On a related note I haven't been posting much because of working on implementing your ideas, but when there's time I should post the changes suggested here and implemented - a lot of your ideas are in and it's made the game *much* better for it. It's really beautiful to see.

But overall I agree, and the number of keys being handed out is definitely growing smaller

Actually had an interesting idea regarding giving keys (Partly from your post and Thomas'):

I'm confident having a nice light humor touch to the game, similar to OotS, will add a lot of fun in playing it (and wonder why more games don't do that, but that's a whole other discussion)
There are points in the game where that happens and it hits the spot (campaign mission 1, evil well, campaign mission 2). On the other hand at other points it's off. And as an indie studio this is pretty difficult to fix - we don't have resources for a full time writer and do a lot of the work ourselves in addition to our art/programming roles.
So I'm wondering what would happen if a mission dialogue was put here and people pitched ideas. Like if we posted the mages mission (which is one of the weaker ones, yet the one that has the most potential imo) and see what people come up with. I think there are a lot of witty people here and it could turn out great. If you guys would be up for it.

JeenLeen

2018-05-15, 12:52 PM

If I get a key, I'd be happy to try to help with some dialogue. I also reckon I'd be able to provide some feedback as I play through the level. (My time to game is rather limited, between a full time job and 2 kids, but this looks interesting and I'd like to try it.) I was in the beta for Telepath Tactics and enjoyed giving feedback to it, so I reckon I'd enjoy this, too.

That said, I'm probably on the edge of who you want to get a key. I could afford it, but I'm not interested enough to pay for the game itself, so I'm a tad bit on the "hey, free stuff" group--but I would feel an obligation to give feedback and try to help improve the game. So no hard feelings if you don't release more keys and/or give them to others instead, but I figured I'd make this post in hopes of a key.

lord_khaine

2018-05-15, 06:54 PM

Actually had an interesting idea regarding giving keys (Partly from your post and Thomas'):

I'm confident having a nice light humor touch to the game, similar to OotS, will add a lot of fun in playing it (and wonder why more games don't do that, but that's a whole other discussion)
There are points in the game where that happens and it hits the spot (campaign mission 1, evil well, campaign mission 2). On the other hand at other points it's off. And as an indie studio this is pretty difficult to fix - we don't have resources for a full time writer and do a lot of the work ourselves in addition to our art/programming roles.
So I'm wondering what would happen if a mission dialogue was put here and people pitched ideas. Like if we posted the mages mission (which is one of the weaker ones, yet the one that has the most potential imo) and see what people come up with. I think there are a lot of witty people here and it could turn out great. If you guys would be up for it.

I suspect if you come up with a promise on the line of "if we use at least x of your lines then you get a mentioning in the credits" then your going to get a lot of dedicated work.

Regarding the death bit. Since i have been playing a lot of Dominions 5 lately i begun thinking, what if losing all your HP just meant a roll on a affliction table?
For stuffs like "broken leg, -1 move" or "lost an eye, 10% down accuracy" or "neutered, minus all pride"

You could start a timer as soon as someone goes down, where if another hero manages to provide first aid then it either reduces the severity of the affliction, or how long it will last.
And make getting them removed by a priest a really expensive option.

oh.. this also opens the option for having a fixed team of heroes thats suposedly the same. If the barbarian then breaks her arm and need to sit out a few missions, then the party might need to hire a discount mercenary to fill the gap.
I think this would provide more attachment.

edit.
I also think it would provide more fun gameplay than crawling forward under overwatch :smalltongue:

Thomas Cardew

2018-05-15, 10:37 PM

Played some more, did the well which I enjoyed. And the mage breach level... which I did not.

The breach one was far too overwatch spammy by the enemy. I beat it without casualties through a lot of the cover manipulation effects etc, but it was not enjoyable. I rarely use overwatch myself, preferring to use the physics skills or other ways. But this fight made me feel like I had to, otherwise I'd just be waiting for my mages' push/vortex/teleport or the barbarians fear skill to come up.

Which leads me to a possible suggestion. The paladin feels weak. I use her a LOT less than the barbarian since she can't move as far or hit as hard. The kick ability is great but the barbarian has that too. I'd suggest making her shield more of her identity.

To that end some half baked skill ideas. Keep in mind, I've never played XCOM so I'm not sure how broken this will be... or how hard to implement. I'm not suggesting all of them by any means just throwing out ideas. The idea is to give the paladin a mobility and damage reduction option. Not as good mobility as the barbarian, but something to make her a little more useful. And better at popping enemy overwatches so you aren't sitting there waiting on the cooldown for your ranged physics skills to come up.

1. Covered Advance: The paladin lifts her shield and charges forward in a straight line. While moving the paladin has half cover in front her. After she reaches the end of the charge, she plants the shield in the ground and receives full cover and loses attack of opportunity for 1 turn.

2. Shield Charge: The paladin charges forward and bashes target with her shield dealing 1/3 damage and pushing it back 1-2 spaces.

3. Matyr's Resilience: The paladin steels herself and gains brace for the rest of the turn but losses X speed.

EDIT: Forgot to mention had a bug in the breach fight where I knocked an enemy mage INTO the wall where it was un-targetable but still able to attack. Still won the fight by killing the head mage but couldn't do anything to the mage in the wall including aoe's.

2nd EDIT: Forgot to mention, when I did the Well fight, I had 2 enemies argo to the side. I then got moved by the scripted dialogue to face the well with those 2 enemies now behind me. Scripted movement to start a fight isn't my favorite thing, but scripted movement that puts me in a worse position without letting me deal with enemies I'm already fighting is much worse.

Knaight

2018-05-16, 01:06 AM

1. We're a tiny indie studio with little/no marketing budget, any people here who received keys likely never would have even heard about the game and so couldn't have bought it (but as you said that has diminishing returns)

It was certainly nowhere near my radar - and that free key not only put it on my radar (which could have happened without it), but let me play it enough to enjoy it, recommend it to a few people, and thus put it on more radars. There's potentially some serious marketing here through word of mouth.

Alent

2018-05-16, 01:25 AM

I like the injury idea. You might also have units that defeat player characters kidnap them somehow, and have to do a side quest to save them, or similar.

Actually had an interesting idea regarding giving keys (Partly from your post and Thomas'):

I'm confident having a nice light humor touch to the game, similar to OotS, will add a lot of fun in playing it (and wonder why more games don't do that, but that's a whole other discussion)
There are points in the game where that happens and it hits the spot (campaign mission 1, evil well, campaign mission 2). On the other hand at other points it's off. And as an indie studio this is pretty difficult to fix - we don't have resources for a full time writer and do a lot of the work ourselves in addition to our art/programming roles.
So I'm wondering what would happen if a mission dialogue was put here and people pitched ideas. Like if we posted the mages mission (which is one of the weaker ones, yet the one that has the most potential imo) and see what people come up with. I think there are a lot of witty people here and it could turn out great. If you guys would be up for it.

This seems an interesting thought. I would certainly feel less bad mooching a key while I'm in forced savings mode if actively contributing in some way, also.

While I'm thinking about it, do you also have a TigSource Devlog thread for the game?

adamzeira

2018-05-17, 12:45 PM

New build finally up! Prologue has been polished a bunch, and aside from minor adjustments in the future I think it's at a point now where we can move on to dealing with Strategic, which is where most of the things you guys are now bringing up are at

Regarding writing I don't want to give keys then make it specific peoples jobs, both because writing in the right tone is something some people will have and some won't and that's okay, and because it'll feel like a job. I think it's better to have people contribute something of significance then get a key

Looking at writing teams for really well made tv series, you see they have a *lot* of writers. The lead writer, Dan Harmon or Tina Fey and such tend to get the credit, but there are actually dozens of writers on those shows. I wonder if to create a masterpiece you really have to know how to work as a team, get all kinds of ideas from different people and their perspective on what works and what doesn't. It's theoretical, but is a pattern that emerges from looking at interviews. Anyway I think it's worth a shot

I'll post a bunch of details around the 91st post so it's right on the top of page 4 and easy to find. And on page 1

..the thing XCOM had going for it is that you had a whole *roster* of people available to you. One soldier dying was bad, especially if it was a Colonel, but ultimately you had others who could slot in...

This does not seem to be the case in Fort Triumph, where you have the typical D&D trope of 'we have four intrepid heroes going boldly forth', but when you lose someone, not only is it pretty expensive to replace, but they get replaced with a newbie

It's a really good point. Not sure what else to say :) I think now that prologue is done and the focus is on strategic, this becomes one of the most important things to deal with.

So far the suggested ways to deal with it by you guys are
- Expensive Resurrection/Quest/Item
- Rotate out heroes so the loss of one doesn't sting as much
- Ability to disable perma death (Fire emblem style)
- You're playing the role of a guildmaster and heroes dying is part of it
- Afflictions table on death

- (Can be in tandem with most of the above) Timer when a hero dies that lets you heal him and determines the severity of what you lose

(if I missed any let me know)

Need to think it over carefully. It's a big decision that'll require time and resources to implement

where a rookie with a grenade could still absolutely turn the tide of even a high-end battle if that grenade was used in the right location.

This part is important, I think it's what separates a good tactical game from a grinding tactical game where only high level units matter. I'd like to think FT has that though - a level 1 hero can have significant impact on the game using kick or whirlwind, as much as a level 1 in XCOM with a grenade.

It can always be improved of course.. Open to ideas. Maybe potions with various effects, similar to grenades in XCOM, but even stranger because you can have any kind of an effect with a potion

EDIT: Been playing some more tonight when I time, had a bug in the middle of a fight.

Fixed 2 out of the 3 bugs. The bug reports were super helpful, thanks. Fun fact: it's basically a miracle you encountered the troll bug twice, it was near impossible to recreate :)

Also was remaking the tutorial and implemented most of the suggestions

I've been mulling over permadeath and it's value in gaming for a while...

...The trick to building attachment to a character is to develop a player's expectations for that character. Permadeath really doesn't factor into it in either direction...

...Many things can build that value- story and dialog, personal time invested via grinding, etc. It shouldn't be too hard to find places where the expectations of that value can be failed by defeat in a way other than permadeath.

Sounds interesting... If you have ideas, happy to hear them :)
Sending you a key in a PM btw. A build came out today with a much changed prologue, would love to see someone playing it

On a related note, I noticed in Schneeky's playthrough that, if a character is missing, their lines are gone but all the others are the same
It varies, maybe it was a piece of dialogue where if a character is alive it adds something independently of anyone else. Most of the time not having a character changes the dialogue. There's definitely an issue there though - the original idea was that most of the speaking would be done by side characters for that specific mission - like a wizard you're escorting or some such

But then we made the prologue campaign as a prototype, where your characters have actual dialogues, and people connect a *lot* more to them than a side NPC. So.. Requires some thinking.. Open to any suggestions

...what if losing all your HP just meant a roll on a affliction table?
For stuffs like "broken leg, -1 move" or "lost an eye, 10% down accuracy" or "neutered, minus all pride"

...could start a timer as soon as someone goes down, where if another hero manages to provide first aid then it either reduces the severity of the affliction, or how long it will last

oh.. this also opens the option for having a fixed team of heroes thats suposedly the same. If the barbarian then breaks her arm and need to sit out a few missions, then the party might need to hire a discount mercenary to fill the gap.
I think this would provide more attachment.

edit.
I also think it would provide more fun gameplay than crawling forward under overwatch :smalltongue:
I like these

Probably hard to balance though - Pillars of Eternity did the injury thing, and it was meaningless because you could always just heal it up
Darkest Dungeon also did the negative traits thing - and it was also almost meaningless because it was too expensive to treat (and too much effort to pick your heroes based on injuries), or keep track of. Though that was with a very large roster of characters
Maybe it can be tweaked to be balanced, though I suspect it'll be hard to keep it in a good place inbetween "too harsh" and "meaningless"

GloatingSwine

2018-05-17, 12:54 PM

You know Fire Emblem? For a lot of time it was infamous for being a tactical RPG with perma-death. But even the first game had the chance to ressurect a dead ally, although it was only in one of the last maps and you had to meet a bunch of extra requirements.

Fire Emblem also traditionally gives you about three times the number of characters you can possibly use in a map, with multiple largely identical copies of the same class quite often, so losing one is less of an inconvenience.

adamzeira

2018-05-17, 06:32 PM

Actually, silly to wait. Will write the overall mission direction and edit the first post to reflect it

So mission 3 in the campaign is between 2 mage factions - the Worldshapers and Stormhands. I feel like there's a lot of potential in it, mage themes being very fertile ground for writing, but it doesn't really nail the humor right now and needs to be rewritten

Mages - Have two recurring themes:
1. Bachelors/Masters/PhD students. References to student and university life and everything that it entails (ramen-eating first years to citation-chasing professors/PhD students)
2. Mad scientists obsessed with discoveries at any cost, disregarding other peoples safety, but not their own. The girl genius comic nails it in a few places
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20091019
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20091021
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20091026

Worldshapers & Stormhands (aka Ghouliards) schools - Worldshapers is a poor college. Stormhands is a fancy university. References and parodies to real world or fantasy schools are welcome. Prep schools, SAT, lack of funds, citations, internships etc etc
Currently -
Worldshapers have a Sorting Fedora, though maybe it should be given to the Stormhands
Stormhands have an upcoming questline where Chad the mage joins you in stealing a rival college's mascot. He's a terrible mage and is only in the university because his father donated a wing to the school

Abstevan Girdleweaver - a professor in the Worldshapers college
Professor Barnaby Pettysworth - a professor in the Stormhands university
They're both at each others throats during the mission for, essentially, being professors in the same field, it's kind of an allusion to the competitive nature academia sometimes brings out in people. It doesn't come across as very amusing atm, and can be removed if that doesn't change. But it's an idea.

The breach - a magical occurrence, somewhat like a meteor crash spot, that both sides want to study. The Stormhands want to take it apart and examine it, the Worldshapers want to examine it as it is first, then take it apart and examine it

You can also use hero characters, but then there should be fallbacks that assume only 1 of them is alive. So for example there can be lines between the paladin and mage, but they need a fallback in case only the mage is alive, for example

(Currently there's only the Worldshapers side but there'll be the option of picking Stormhands soon)
pre-mission dialogue - a confrontation between the mages
mission dialogue 1 - defend the breach for 3 turns while enemies approach
mission dialogue 2 - breach is safe, chase after Barnaby
mission dialogue 3 - Barnaby is dead, victory

The first 2 dialogues go as such:

World map dialogue:
Abstevan: Pettysworth, you old hack, you won't get anywhere near this breach!
Pettysworth: Do you understand the forces we are contending with here Girdleweaver? Of course not.
Where did you learn your "magic", In a coloring book?
Abstevan: It was the best coloring book the school board could afford that year, you pompous slime!
Pettysworth: Think of the <b>science</b>, Girdleweaver! The discoveries we could make, the advancements!
We must consume this breach's mana and study it!

<size=-7>It will, theoretically, only collapse the wave fabric of time a little bit.</size>
Abstevan: You maniac! The breach must be protected.
We will mend the tears and restore this piece of land to its full pride.

<size=-7>Then afterwards, we will rip it apart in a careful and precise manner, of course.</size>
Pettysworth: You insipid coward. You know full well my funding requires immediate results.
I've had it with this...
Pettysworth: Stormhands! Show these cretins the destructive power of REAL mages!
Abstevan: To arms, Worldshapers! To arms!
That is, uh, if you were given any weapons. Budget was rather tight this year...

First dialogue:

Abstevan Girdleweaver: The Stormhands are going to rip this breach open if we don't stop them. Fight on!
Professor Barnaby Pettysworth: Are those actual broomsticks wielded by your pupils, Girdleweaver?
Abstevan Girdleweaver: What our students lack in armaments, they make up for in ability, unlike your spoiled brats!
<Worldshapers mage student moves up, Stormhands mage student casts fireball, killing him>
Professor Barnaby Pettysworth: Haha! What was that you were saying?
Abstevan Girdleweaver: Confirmation bias is beneath even you Pettysworth.

Although perhaps sorting students by bravery over smarts is less than effective. Somebody should really speak with that Sorting Fedora.

<Heroes teleport in to assist Abstevan>
Any (1-1):
Mage: We're here to help!
Ranger: We're here ta help.
Paladin: We have arrived to save the day!
Savage: We come help!
Abstevan Girdleweaver: Reinforcements! Thank the Gods. We need to hold out long enough to heal the breach.

{Dustin}! You’re my star pupil, go and heal that breach! You lot, protect {Dustin:her-him} while {Dustin:she-he} works!

Let's start with the first 2 and see what we can do. Editing suggestions, dialogue ideas, general theme ideas are all welcome. Discuss

lord_khaine

2018-05-18, 11:28 AM

I like these

Probably hard to balance though - Pillars of Eternity did the injury thing, and it was meaningless because you could always just heal it up
Darkest Dungeon also did the negative traits thing - and it was also almost meaningless because it was too expensive to treat (and too much effort to pick your heroes based on injuries), or keep track of. Though that was with a very large roster of characters
Maybe it can be tweaked to be balanced, though I suspect it'll be hard to keep it in a good place inbetween "too harsh" and "meaningless"

Then Steal borrow from both sources?
Afflictions cant be healed up. But there either is a chance after each mission that a affliction will go away. Or maybe it will last for x missions. Perhaps afflictions are divided between sewere and minor, depending on how swiftly someone aids the downed hero.

Perhaps sewere afflictions are permanent and wont heal on their own.
If your Barbarian breaks a leg, then you can either take 2? 3? missions with a movement speed penalty. Or leave him with a healer for a mission. Or pay a cleric a lot to use healing magic.

But if he instead lost an eye then your a little more screwed. Or you would be. If the Worldshapers would not love to sell you a crystal eye thats 90% likely to not expose your poor hero to the horrors hiding in fabric of reality. Observing with their unblinking eyes.

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-18, 11:50 AM

So, first episode of the actual campaign up. Since there's been two revisions since my last episode, there's been a few really awesome changes, including a lot better knowledge of where things fall and where you are going to get hit with overwatches. This is awesome and cool and I like it.

Still trying to figure out how the overworld works, so I'll probably cover that a bit more in depth in the next episode.

Maryring

2018-05-18, 04:25 PM

I reinstalled the game after hearing about the updated intro, and I want to give it a thumbs up. It's a lot better now. Sure, it's still hard. But it's not too hard, and for the most part it serves as an introduction to the game. One thing. During the boss fight, I noticed that at some point my fireball spell had become a CreateRock spell and misunderstand me correctly. Creating cover is really nifty and a very useful skill for the wizard to have. But it's not what I want to happen when I'm trying to nuke a group of enemies.

Regarding the recent ideas presented I'm... torn. Honestly, a guild master ish role would be pretty nifty. You could have some base building elements ala HOMM/XCOM to spend your magic on, because as currently is Magic seems to be either feast or famine since it's spent on recruiting new folks and on potions. At the same time the writing during the prologue did make me highly invested in the Mage character. Ah, but I suppose this could just be fixed by making her the guildmaster in the main campaign.

I do like the idea of using afflictions to keep a unit out of commission for X time. I don't think you should make them permanent though, because if you have a hero with a permanent halved movement speed for example she might as well be dead for all I can use her. If she has to stay out for a couple days, then that's a suitable incentive to not get people dropped, without feeling like a high level hero getting dropped means an end since you have to grind up another character. This, by the way, is one of the biggest problems with Darkest Dungeons, since I see you used that as an example. If a hero in Darkest Dungeons die, you're forced to spend several missions slowly grinding them up to max level again, simply because levels are so impactful. You've done a decent job in making sure that even a novice mage is useful... but I do not feel the same for the Paladin, Barbarian and Ranger.

For the Ranger, the problem is that her physics level 1 skill is the grappling arrow. Which I have thus far never used. Pulling an enemy closer doesn't feel useful when I could've just as well just killed it with an arrow instead.

The Paladin and Barbarian meanwhile require you to get really close in order to kick something. Meaning not only are they probably destroying their own cover, but they could again usually get close enough to just kill whomever they're targetting. It's certainly a lot more useful than the grappling arrow, since at least kicking a box or something into an enemy leaves them stunned, but the grappling arrow feels like it has way too few situations to make use of it. I think Rangers should start with smokebomb or rain instead, as those are more generally useful.

Also, while other characters seem to gain a lot of strength and options as they progress the Paladin feels... weak. It's role seems to be focused on being a defensive tank that draws fire from others, but the role has neither the healing nor the defense to make good use of it. Consider giving it either some damage resistance, passive cover effects, regeneration, or have her heal skill be stronger on herself. Because right now she oesn't feel like she's got any reason for being beyond her blinding bolt.

As for the writing, I'll take a look at it later. It seems like a fun challenge, but I'm a bit tapped out at the moment to offer more thoughts.

lord_khaine

2018-05-18, 04:43 PM

I do like the idea of using afflictions to keep a unit out of commission for X time. I don't think you should make them permanent though, because if you have a hero with a permanent halved movement speed for example she might as well be dead for all I can use her. If she has to stay out for a couple days, then that's a suitable incentive to not get people dropped, without feeling like a high level hero getting dropped means an end since you have to grind up another character. This, by the way, is one of the biggest problems with Darkest Dungeons, since I see you used that as an example. If a hero in Darkest Dungeons die, you're forced to spend several missions slowly grinding them up to max level again, simply because levels are so impactful. You've done a decent job in making sure that even a novice mage is useful... but I do not feel the same for the Paladin, Barbarian and Ranger.

With permanent it was also just meant not going away on its own. Instead needing some investment besides time to get rid off.
Either in the shape of magical healing. Or else in forged replacement bodyparts from the magical college.

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-18, 05:00 PM

For the Ranger, the problem is that her physics level 1 skill is the grappling arrow. Which I have thus far never used. Pulling an enemy closer doesn't feel useful when I could've just as well just killed it with an arrow instead.I've found a few uses for it. Specifically, pulling something behind a target in cover into it. Or pulling one enemy into another, that is always fun. Because while the one behind cover is hard to hit... the one behind the one in cover isn't, so you're getting a twofer.

The Paladin and Barbarian meanwhile require you to get really close in order to kick something. Meaning not only are they probably destroying their own cover, but they could again usually get close enough to just kill whomever they're targetting. It's certainly a lot more useful than the grappling arrow, since at least kicking a box or something into an enemy leaves them stunned, but the grappling arrow feels like it has way too few situations to make use of it. I think Rangers should start with smokebomb or rain instead, as those are more generally useful.

Also, while other characters seem to gain a lot of strength and options as they progress the Paladin feels... weak. It's role seems to be focused on being a defensive tank that draws fire from others, but the role has neither the healing nor the defense to make good use of it. Consider giving it either some damage resistance, passive cover effects, regeneration, or have her heal skill be stronger on herself. Because right now she oesn't feel like she's got any reason for being beyond her blinding bolt.Paladin is pretty awesome, in my opinion. He does get a heal, it's a heal all allies nearby on killing an enemy. Sure, it's a one point heal, but it's better than nothing. Also, he gets an accuracy buff aura that is completely passive, which is just silly good.

The problem is the current RNG roulette method of obtaining skills, which I am not a fan of.

NeoVid

2018-05-18, 05:00 PM

Played through the updated prologue, and introducing the overworld mechanics during the intro improved it a lot. Honestly, the game's improving so fast it doesn't feel like a production from a small, non-professional dev team, which is impressive.

My Wizard also got hit with that bug of Fireball being replaced with another spell partway through. Not a pleasant surprise when I tried burning a spawn of enemies in the catacombs...

Maryring

2018-05-18, 05:17 PM

I've found a few uses for it. Specifically, pulling something behind a target in cover into it. Or pulling one enemy into another, that is always fun. Because while the one behind cover is hard to hit... the one behind the one in cover isn't, so you're getting a twofer.

Paladin is pretty awesome, in my opinion. He does get a heal, it's a heal all allies nearby on killing an enemy. Sure, it's a one point heal, but it's better than nothing. Also, he gets an accuracy buff aura that is completely passive, which is just silly good.

The problem is the current RNG roulette method of obtaining skills, which I am not a fan of.

The first instance again asks me to target an enemy with a skill that, if I had used a regular attack, probably would've just killed it anyway. Whirlwind targets something immobile and so almost always hits, but the grappling arrow is about as accurate as the regular shot since it lacks the immobile target bonus. And you can't get around the low accuracy by flanking, because at that point they're no longer being pulled into the environment. The latter has yet to happen in my game, as the enemies are generally good about not placing one another one rook move away from one another.

And one strong skill does not a strong unit make. The heal is weak. It is only when the paladin makes a kill, which runs counter to the general design around buffing, debuffing and generally supporting. And for most fights it triggers once or twice. Which isn't an extra hit from even a goblin archer. Sure, only the last hit point matter. But the chances of it being the last hit point are very slim. Or in other words... most of the time it's not "better than nothing" because it amounts to nothing. I'd prefer it be an active skill that can be used X times per fight, healing for more on a single target. Or rework it and make the Paladin have a stronger identity as a tank that draws damae to herself.

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-18, 06:06 PM

The first instance again asks me to target an enemy with a skill that, if I had used a regular attack, probably would've just killed it anyway. Whirlwind targets something immobile and so almost always hits, but the grappling arrow is about as accurate as the regular shot since it lacks the immobile target bonus. And you can't get around the low accuracy by flanking, because at that point they're no longer being pulled into the environment. The latter has yet to happen in my game, as the enemies are generally good about not placing one another one rook move away from one another.You can target immobile objects with grapnel arrow as well. Also, stunning two or more characters instead of killing one is absolutely worth it, especially if the other one is an archer in overwatch (because damage negates overwatch).

And one strong skill does not a strong unit make. The heal is weak. It is only when the paladin makes a kill, which runs counter to the general design around buffing, debuffing and generally supporting. And for most fights it triggers once or twice. Which isn't an extra hit from even a goblin archer. Sure, only the last hit point matter. But the chances of it being the last hit point are very slim. Or in other words... most of the time it's not "better than nothing" because it amounts to nothing. I'd prefer it be an active skill that can be used X times per fight, healing for more on a single target. Or rework it and make the Paladin have a stronger identity as a tank that draws damae to herself.I think you and I have a fundamental disagreement about the Paladin's role. Every character's job is 'kill something'. If it cannot do that, it doesn't deserve to be in play. The secondary role is general support, something the Paladin does fantastically well.

* You completely ignored the skill which gives all enemies nearby a passive bonus to-hit against. For this alone, and no other reason, I would consider the class to be mandatory. This can bring a 60% shot up to an 80% if the Paladin is close enough.

* The 'hit a target and heal' is a *PARTY HEAL*, not an individual heal, which is FAR more valuable. Sure, it's only one point, but as you said, only the last point counts. And at least in my playthrough so far, the Paladin has been very high in the kill count. So it tends to proc regularly. Enough so that it is absolutely worth.

* Taunt can draw attacks, however this can actually be a bad thing, because while the Paladin does have a lot more hit points than your ranged characters, no one can handle getting focus-fired. Unless you are spending regularly on potions for him, Taunt seems more of a trap than anything else. Granted, right now there's not a whole lot else to spend the currency on in the game, so there's no reason not to, but still.

Paladin is probably THE strongest character in the game. He can take multiple hits (especially if he is braced) and still going. He's got passive abilities that are always on that are always awesome. He's your front-line specialist, who can also bash heads in with the best of them.

If there is any weak character, it's the Barbarian.

Knaight

2018-05-18, 10:38 PM

Maryring

2018-05-19, 04:41 AM

Are you for real? You complain that I didn't acknowledge your accuracy boost (which has the same problem as the heal, requiring close proximity to the paladin, which leaves the squishy ranger and mage exposed. And neither the Paladin nor Barbarian need accuracy boosters) and in the same sentence fail to acknowledge that enemies don't move into positions that allow for double stuns very often. Useful when it happens, but a low level ranger still doesnt feel like she adds as much to the situation as the mage, because ranged kick is just that much better.

Furthermore, the Paladin has for me always been the one with the fewest kills, because the Barbarian can get close enough to an enemy and still attack with her dash, or push people out of cover with her war cry, leaving the enemies exposed to fire from the archer and mage. The paladin meanwhile disrupts overwatch or creates a ZoC for archers. And again, it's a "team heal" that requires bringing the squishies close.

And seriously. "Every character's job is 'kill something'." Of course it is. You're seriously going to argue that as a point when discussing the purpose of roles in the game? It's a null point.

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-05-19, 06:40 AM

Are you for real? You complain that I didn't acknowledge your accuracy boost (which has the same problem as the heal, requiring close proximity to the paladin, which leaves the squishy ranger and mage exposed. And neither the Paladin nor Barbarian need accuracy boosters) and in the same sentence fail to acknowledge that enemies don't move into positions that allow for double stuns very often. Useful when it happens, but a low level ranger still doesnt feel like she adds as much to the situation as the mage, because ranged kick is just that much better.I think you misunderstand the ability...

*ENEMIES* near the Paladin are easier for everyone else to hit. Your ranged characters can be nowhere near your paladin. As long as your Paladin is in the thick of it, your ranged characters get relevant accuracy bonuses. Passively.

As far as the rest, I suppose we simply have extremely different play styles and philosophies.

Alent

2018-05-20, 12:01 AM

Thanks for the key to let me try this out- I definitely think you've got something special here. I'll kind of just run through my thoughts on my first play/stream today, I really enjoyed it, but felt like I failed a bit at making the stream interesting. I'm doing some editing to crop the audio checks and stuff at the start of the video and then I'll repost it and link.

Sometime this week when I get my major work project finished, I'll sit down and do another play session where I study it without worrying about trying to keep things moving for the sake of the stream, and get a more thorough impression built up. The game is different enough from the ones I'm used to that it did take a little while to shift my thinking into it, so I think that more thorough session will result in a better follow up video.

The good:
I'll start off with something that was a personal concern- the Action point and overwatch system. Most games I've played with that particular set of features tend to lose most of their strategic depth to the point most of the time they are mutually exclusive with strategy and tactics. Fortunately, keeping the point tally at 2 really makes it work, keeping it within the realm of the traditional Move + Act concept that games like TO/FFT/etc. use.

The Terrain interactions are a pure win. Make sure that no matter what, keep as much of that in as you reasonably can. There are, however, a few places where they need polishing up. If you diagonally kick a tree, it's going to fall in a direction and I couldn't really find a way to change that direction. Additionally, I really like how that one ranger spell lets you turn everything into air hockey. :D

I don't have anything new to say about the dialog, but I definitely enjoy it. I actually found myself constantly derailed by the flow of humor and text amusing me. Probably bad for my stream, but I really enjoyed it all the same. ^_^

The bad:

I had a little bit of an awkward time with the start of chapter 1, specifically the team of Skeletal Archers supporting Mr. Death-challenged at the end. I get you're supposed to go in slowly and brace, but there's a spot in there where you're encouraged to drop your guard and someone usually dies when you do.

The 4 person limit. The prologue made me think I'd be able to get up to 5 or 6 party members, so when I went to recruit a 5th person, I found I couldn't. I really think the game will work better with parties of 6.

Your characters need work. Lots of it. Not in terms of dialog, but in terms of gameplay structure- the random skill choice is so-so, kinda nifty-ish in some ways, but the lack of predictability causes them to lose any real sense of growth. I can see why you were interested in building character attachment, I really didn't find myself being very interested in the characters past the oneliners themselves. Once I started chapter 1 and found myself looking at a second batch of sameFace mcRandomName, I found it harder to remember the names from the first chapter. I would suggest 3 changes:

Customization. Change Names, portraits, etc. This is a huge streaming/LP thing- "Okay, who do I name this one after? After you? okay, pick a portrait!" This will help both player and streamer alike. (I think a choice of classes at the start of Ch1 would also be a good idea, but I think you mentioned that was off the table earlier?)
Add Equipment and inventory management. It doesn't have to be complicated, just enough to give players something to lust after in shops.
Provide some kind of preview of what skills are available. I don't think the random itself is necessarily bad, but show a more clear picture of what each option lets you work towards. I would also consider using some form of affinity unlock, such as the ranger wearing Ice armor or an ice elemental weapon to give you the option of learning ice arrow at level up.

The Ugly:

Grappling shot is awesome... but why does it obey cover? I got so many kills with this ability, and got to do some silly stuff with it, but... uh... it feels like it's supposed to be a counter for monsters in cover. Like you're supposed to shoot something in cover, and yank it out, taking the cover down with it. Instead, you end up with the same low hit rate, so I tended to just yank cover behind a monster into said monster, usually taking their cover out at the same time. The result is what I saw as my favorite move ended up also being "Gr, I don't think this is going to work..." more often than not.

On that note, terrain attacks feel much more useful than the actual melee and ranged attacks. This is probably subjective due to "new toy" syndrome, but I really felt like my ranged characters were less than useful without overwatch or their terrain abilities off cooldown.

Your overworld definitely feels like it would work perfectly with an injury system like the recent battletech title, as opposed to permadeath. The raw magic as currency idea lends to resurrection, and the day/week model would work nicely with a time penalty. (I'd have them auto resurrected for no cost at the end of battle and just call the injury timer "Resurrection sickness") This would encourage you to both avoid letting people die, but also encourage you to build an A and B team... or it would if you could get more than 4 people in ch1.

I feel like the font needs to be a size bigger and possibly stand out a little more. I ran into a "That was dumb of me" issue with this as I scale the game down a little in OBS to make room for embedding twitch chat on the left, which made it hardish for viewers to read the game text, but I also found I was skimming past some text without mentally registering it in my regular gameplay, also.

As another little thing, one of my viewers was really thrown by how misses didn't have their own special sound effect. I think it was the sound of hitting terrain doodads, but that may be something to put down for a later polish pass.

The Prologue:
Pretty fun. I'm not even sure where to begin commentary wise because it had me chuckling the whole way. Lots of fun destructibles, some of which probably needed better clarification on what each did. (The pots in particular stand out. I smashed all of them in the hallway to figure out what they did, and very nearly blew one up in my own face.)

I couldn't figure out how to target the Goblin tunnel, and ended up destroying it by accident while trying to kill a goblin down the tunnel.

Chapter 1:
First, I really think you should make the Mayor's risen daughter a PC instead of just part of the enemy encounter. Make her come back after every map regardless of death, without any timer penalty. Considering the circumstances of her unlife, it'd be great snarky fun.

On mid battle character death affecting dialog:
Having seen the script, I feel you could probably get away with having a living character go "Psst- read so and so's lines." and just have one of the survivors pick up the lines while pretending to be the other character.

I'm sure I'll think of more to say later, but that's all I can think of for now.

Edit: *points down* GilesTheCleric was one of my viewers during the stream. :D

GilesTheCleric

2018-05-20, 12:36 AM

The good:

I would add that another UI thing I thought was good was the interaction between the camera and foes behind objects. The transparency effect on buildings and walls and whatever was much classier, I thought, than just doing an outline like in Torchlight (also new Xcom? I can't remember how that game handles it). I didn't take a hard look at how that effect worked in detail, that is, QA testing it. But, I did want to mention that you might consider adding a footprint to your objects. As it stands, the see-through mode appears to just reveal whatever terrain is beneath each house/ wall/ whatever. Giving them a solid footprint might make the depth perception of where those hidden foes are in relation to the structure more clear, especially for the bigger ones like the houses.

Also, please don't ever remove the current camera freedom. It looked like players are able to rotate the angle in just about any increment, rather than fixed increments like Xcom (which was super gross). I don't know if there's a need to unlock z-angle or to allow height changes; that would probably depend on your level design. As-is, it looked like there wasn't a ton of vertical movement, so Z-axis adjustment may not be necessary.

The bad:

I assume adding detailed tooltips/ some sort of game mechanic encyclopedia is low-priority right now. As a 3e player, knowing game mechanic details is very important to me. I know the trend in gaming right now is to rely on users to google or look at wikis, but *get off my lawn* I dislike that trend and think it's wrong. Whenever you can teach/ show the player the mechanics, such as through that low-risk corridor with the pots before the boss battle, or with tooltips/ an in-game wiki, I think that strengthens the wide appeal of the game, and makes it more portable.

I didn't play, so I don't know how modifiable the controls are, but that's always important for a PC game. Judging from the visuals and how many objects/ particle effects were being rendered at once, it looks to me like this game is being aimed at lower-power machines, possibly including phones/ tablets. Allowing users with higher-spec machines to up the draw distance or that sort of thing would be nice. I know I get constantly frustrated by that in torchlight (and yes, I know the draw distance is tied to the aggro mechanics in that game, but still -- it hampers certain styles of play).

The ugly:

I'm pretty addicted to Battle Brothers, and think it's better than xcom or just about any other tactics game I've played, so until I'm forever done with that game, I probably won't be picking up any other tactics games in the interim, which means maybe I'm not your target demo. If the movement puzzling bits continue to be pushed and unique, then that might be something that makes it different enough to the rest of the genre to pique my interest. So feel free to ignore everything I've said, I don't mind ^^

--

Overall, I'm impressed. Some of my words may be critical, but that's because there's so many other things about this game that are great and don't need comment. Don't stop what you're doing.

adamzeira

2018-05-21, 06:31 AM

Updated the first post with the whole "pitch ideas/write dialogue -> get keys" plan

Agree about characters being unbalanced by the way. Not sure in which direction - some people swear by the Paladin, some by the Savage, some by the ranger. Most people agree the mage, when she reaches higher levels, is by far the most OP :) Balancing definitely needs to happen, we tweak it occasionally but it's a work in progress. I think the trick would be to decide and give each hero 1-3 "ways of being played"

for example if the Paladin (who's the closest to being this way) had skills correlated to
1. Staying near the party and buffing/debuffing
2. Running into the midst of the enemy and still be useful thanks to auras, maybe an auto-brace in the future, etc

Similar to how in xcom they make sure each class has two general playstyles - supports specialize in either healing or mobility + overwatch. Heavies can be either attackers or use rockets. Rangers either scout or use melee attacks, etc

Cool suggestions are welcome

Bunch of random ideas, in no particular order, would love to hear thoughts:
What do you guys think about making health carry over to the world map? So a hero finishing a battle with 5/8 health carries that over to the world. And of course implementing ways of resting/healing on the world map. Not sure if that would be fun or annoying

Another idea for the world map - supplies as a resource that is consumed for example at a rate of 1/hero per day, so travelling the world becomes a bit of a game in that you could lose in it and have to be on your toes

Regarding the paladin discussion earlier - what if the Paladins healing aura triggered as long as he's close enough to the dying target, regardless of who makes the kill

Thanks for the key to let me try this out- I definitely think you've got something special here. I'll kind of just run through my thoughts on my first play/stream today...

Relayed a ton of the things, thanks :) Great points

The idea with the mayors daughter is awesome. If we find a writer with more time to spare I'm suggesting it right away

I'm pretty addicted to Battle Brothers
Would love to hear your thoughts on the strategic map then :) I think it's a big part of what carries Battle Brothers through to being a great game. And we're just now getting to the point of working on the strategic

Going to make sure the urns in crypt get their effect explanation popup, great catch. There's an interesting quote of Sid Meier where he says strategy games are all about giving players 2-3 good clear and understandable choices at a time, which I think for all of the complexity strategy games have is surprisingly true. And urns having clear indications would be a big help in that regard

But if he instead lost an eye then your a little more screwed. Or you would be. If the Worldshapers would not love to sell you a crystal eye thats 90% likely to not expose your poor hero to the horrors hiding in fabric of reality. Observing with their unblinking eyes.

Hah, love the idea of whatever resurrection or healing methods being weird insane experiments by the mages

lord_khaine

2018-05-21, 07:14 AM

On mid battle character death affecting dialog:
Having seen the script, I feel you could probably get away with having a living character go "Psst- read so and so's lines." and just have one of the survivors pick up the lines while pretending to be the other character.

I second this idea. Its Hilarious. If Rockheart the Barbarian is down, then Tim the intern is pushed on to the scene and given a script to read from :D

Hah, love the idea of whatever resurrection or healing methods being weird insane experiments by the mages

Well. The idea were mainly that it was how you had to treat the worst class of afflictions. The ones where something had been chopped off.

I dont know how much gear there is in the game. But it also adds a new option for upgrades. Like grafting a ogre arm to the barbarian. Or giving the Paladin a Troll Blood infusion (68% risk free)

GilesTheCleric

2018-05-21, 04:30 PM

Bunch of random ideas, in no particular order, would love to hear thoughts:
What do you guys think about making health carry over to the world map? So a hero finishing a battle with 5/8 health carries that over to the world. And of course implementing ways of resting/healing on the world map. Not sure if that would be fun or annoying

Having damage carry over will make the game longer and a little more grindy. Though I play many games like that (see: battle brothers, darkest dungeon, mount and blade, dungeons of dredmor), it may not be necessary for you to include depending on the pacing you desire. The atmosphere of this game isn't quite as gritty as those other games, so the mechanic may also not fit in that sense.

Another idea for the world map - supplies as a resource that is consumed for example at a rate of 1/hero per day, so travelling the world becomes a bit of a game in that you could lose in it and have to be on your toes
Survival elements are popular (read: overused) in games right now. Do you want to add a macro layer to your game like that, and what benefit does it achieve? You already have a limitation on overworld exploration via the "days/ travel distance" mechanic. Do you need both?

Would love to hear your thoughts on the strategic map then :) I think it's a big part of what carries Battle Brothers through to being a great game. And we're just now getting to the point of working on the strategic I only got to see a little bit of the overworld when Alent was streaming; I'll share my thoughts on it once I get a better look.

Knaight

2018-05-21, 05:33 PM

Alent

2018-05-21, 06:02 PM

On the mad science experiment resurrections, that could be AMAZING. I could see wanting some people to die just to frankenstein them and then once you have ones you like, wanting to keep the "perfect mutations" alive because a death may take an upgrade as easily as give it. Very interesting idea.

Bunch of random ideas, in no particular order, would love to hear thoughts:
What do you guys think about making health carry over to the world map? So a hero finishing a battle with 5/8 health carries that over to the world. And of course implementing ways of resting/healing on the world map. Not sure if that would be fun or annoying

I suggest you avoid this. You have a very low resource setup that lends itself to a "Start fresh every time" design that seems to suit the overall tone of your game.

Another idea for the world map - supplies as a resource that is consumed for example at a rate of 1/hero per day, so travelling the world becomes a bit of a game in that you could lose in it and have to be on your toes

The world map is already insanely busy. If you do this, it needs to be limited to a single chapter's gimmick where some of the other gimmicks are shut down, or there's some set urgency to drive it. Else, it will be like food in D&D: An incredibly annoyance everyone wants to mod away and fails to appreciate.

It could definitely make for an interesting gimmick in the right circumstance where other things such as faction, etc. are disabled, but otherwise it seems like it would be redundant to all your other overworld mechanics.

Regarding the paladin discussion earlier - what if the Paladins healing aura triggered as long as he's close enough to the dying target, regardless of who makes the kill

One thing I intend to study when I get back to the game is if there's anything to gain from strategic knockback/grapple hook/other forms of ice hockey near the Paladin. One of the things I found was that the Ranger's rain spell made it very easy to shoot people into attacks of opportunity, and it seems to me that if you're using the Paladin as the fulcrum to such a thing, you could rapidly pile up +1 heals, so long as AoO limits allow. That said, it'll be a few days before I can pull the game up and play again.

The results of that testing will determine my answer to this.

Relayed a ton of the things, thanks :) Great points

The idea with the mayors daughter is awesome. If we find a writer with more time to spare I'm suggesting it right away

Suggest it anyway, I think it will bring the first chapter to life! *rimshot* :smallbiggrin:

Lionheart

2018-05-22, 12:34 PM

I took one of the early keys, but haven't had as much time as I would have liked to play through yet. What little I have played relates closely to a lot of comments so far. I'll try to be more specific as I go on.

That said, I am a writer by profession, and would really like to get involved in this side of the game if you're looking for help. Just DM me if you want to talk it through, but always happy to build my portfolio.

adamzeira

2018-05-23, 12:06 PM

Having damage carry over will make the game longer and a little more grindy. Though I play many games like that (see: battle brothers, darkest dungeon, mount and blade, dungeons of dredmor), it may not be necessary for you to include depending on the pacing you desire. The atmosphere of this game isn't quite as gritty as those other games, so the mechanic may also not fit in that sense.

Looks like a unanimous no. Neat, less work :)

Working on the party screen now, which is the basis for a lot of the elements brought up that were problematic

- Heroes deaths/resurrection/rotation/recruitment
- Inventory
- Leveling up
- Slight customization (At least renaming for now, hopefully portraits soon)

I second this idea. Its Hilarious. If Rockheart the Barbarian is down, then Tim the intern is pushed on to the scene and given a script to read from :D
I like it

Not precisely related but brought to mind something I wonder about - still trying to figure out how to balance when to break the 4th wall and when not to. In the beginning of the first printed book of OotS Rich writes about how he regrets doing it in the very first page

Recently I thought Deadpool 2 did a really nice job of it. Didn't like the first movie, but felt the second really nailed it. I wonder if a few of the tricks to pulling it off are
1. Limiting breaking the 4th wall to a small number of character (Deadpool, mostly Elan)
2. By the nature of things it makes stories un-serious. So making sure there are sufficiently dramatic moments to balance things out (something I think made deadpool 1 not great at all)
3. Having serious characters. In OotS as much as everyone jokes around, you do have the villains who genuinely try to destroy the world. Dark stuff. In deadpool 2 there's Cable and a few other characters who are very intense+serious and make a great contrast

That said, I am a writer by profession, and would really like to get involved in this side of the game if you're looking for help.
DMing you. I'll repeat what I've said to some people in DMs -

1. Nothing would make me happier than finding someone to take care of the writing. It's a task that's not easy to do by itself, nevermind juggle with other responsibilities. All you need to do is write something that convinces me and the other team members that you can write well
2. I think the real test here is the tone - it's not easy finding someone who gets it and writes things that are amusing yet pull you in. That's going to be the criteria to convince me and other team members - if you can pull that off, you're in
3. The test to see if you have what it takes is to see your take on the Mages Showdown (mission 3) dialogues. The first 2 dialogues are on page 1 of this thread. I'll post the final 2 dialogues of the mission here in a bit in case anyone wants to do the entire thing, as it gives you the ability to add twists in the middle/end
4. Payment isn't something we can do atm until covering the games expenses. but anything else we can offer is on the table. And of course if the game does well, that changes
5. We move pretty quickly. If you write cool content that's well received you can see it in the game a week later, and of course all credit goes to you if you want to use it in a portfolio

JeenLeen

2018-05-23, 12:15 PM

Just played a couple hours last night, getting through the Village missions in the Prologue and about to enter where the goblin leads you.

Overall, rather liked it. The tone of writing matches the art pretty well, but there's also detailed strategy and tactics. I thought the first mission did a good job of showing how to move, attack, and interact with the environment.

In the first Village fight, it took me a while to figure out I couldn't attack then move, or that attacks used up all remaining AP. Also took me a while to figure out where my AP-left was. Maybe I missed that in the first mission, but if not, adding that intel could help.
I found the fights fair difficulty. Not too hard, but a couple times I was close to a PC dying.

The main bother I had was healing potions. It was unclear to me if they are one-use, or just a long recharge. Also, being unable to swap inventory or use them on an ally you are next to is hard. Lastly, took me a moment to realize they use 0 AP (right?).
I get that some others have noted similar concerns with inventory.

In the cave fight, is there any boon to killing spiders? I freed a few from webs, and I guess I got a few extra XP, but I wasn't clear. I ask mainly because if there's something to interact with in the environment that makes enemies, it should be meaningful. Especially if you could screw yourself over by making tiny enemies that bite you while you're busy fighting goblins.

I agree that full-heal between fights is nice. I think honestly needed, or else I wouldn't have finished the Village fights without losing 1 or 2 characters.
I'm against 'food' or another resource. (I reckon how many days you spend traveling will have some counter in the actual game.)
I think injury that regens over time is much better than permadeath.

EDIT/possible bug report
In the prologue, when I enter the cave (so still in 'world map' mode, but inside the cave), I walked to a chest & had the goblin open it. He got a healing potion. But when I went to the battle area, he didn't have a potion. So it seems like some bug happened to make him not get his potion.

Also, is there some point (after a battle scene, after resting for a night, etc.) that potions vanish? I noticed the healing potions I got in the Village weren't there in the last area.
I may have rested between getting the potion and starting the fight, so if that undoes potions, I guess this isn't a bug.

adamzeira

2018-06-23, 09:03 AM

Boom, major patch out! Has some really nice changes

Your feedback and feedback from others (broadly) boiled down into 4 categories of issues regularly brought up
- Balance ideas for hero death
- Inventory
- Skills/Leveling up system
- Customization

Inventory and the party screen are the first step as they lead to the rest, inventory is 95% in, you can roam and collect artifacts and relics. The one remaining thing there is I'd like is to create more interesting relics that substantially modify gameplay (there are 2 of these already)
The rest of the feedback was lightly touched on, you can manage party members, have more than your basic party count, choose who goes on missions, customize their names, and heroes have a random different look.

https://twitter.com/FortTriumph/status/1010492421506035712

There's also a summer sale going on, if you want you can get the game for a discounted price, and we definitely appreciate the support
https://store.steampowered.com/app/612570/Fort_Triumph/

A few keys, please provide feedback if you take one, and post something saying which you took so I can remove it:
IMH2W-TZ20V-T66EH
KI0ZX-YJ4L5-BIZWX
X6J04-R8RA5-8B9L0

adamzeira

2018-06-24, 01:20 PM

Small patch released, updated first page information

Divayth Fyr

2018-06-24, 01:26 PM

Took X6J04-R8RA5-8B9L0, thanks!

Will try to provide feedback once I can get to play the game, which probably won't be today nor tomorrow though.

adamzeira

2018-06-25, 07:21 AM

There's no 1-day rush, can be next week as well :) As long as you remember as it's very important to us

Rhazal

2018-06-25, 01:31 PM

Took KI0ZX-YJ4L5-BIZWX, thanks for that.

Started playing the tutorial, great fun so far and I like the art style, tree and goblin bowling with vortex is a funny physics interaction.

DodgerH2O

2018-06-26, 09:20 PM

Been eyeballing this game for a bit and Steam even recommended it. I never buy Early Access no matter how promising but I'll definitely take a free copy in exchange for feedback. Used IMH2W-TZ20V-T66EH and installing right now.

JeenLeen

2018-06-27, 03:54 PM

Cool. I'll try to get some time to game this week/weekend and see if I have any strong opinions.

DodgerH2O

2018-06-29, 05:59 PM

Haven't had much time to play yet, still in the tutorial but I did notice one thing. I use controller only and the "highlight" on the buttons in the Settings menu is rather dim and hard to discern. It's visible, for sure, but it took me a minute or so of looking to figure out which of two options was the highlighted one. With a mouse you just click but I'm a big fan of controller-based games due to a RSI and the interface isn't quite as clear as it could be.

adamzeira

2019-05-01, 10:19 AM

DaedalusMkV

2019-05-01, 10:22 AM

Grabbed the last key on the list, looking forwards to giving it a try.

ShneekeyTheLost

2019-05-01, 12:43 PM

New patch is out with the new campaign and strategic map. A *lot* of changes have been implemented since the game first came out and this post was made. Also added 3 keys in the hopes of getting more feedback, as this seems to have worked out last time

Thanks guys!

It sure has changed enormously. You guys have put a TON of work into this game. I really need to go back and do a full Let's Play of it on my channel at some point.

adamzeira

2019-05-02, 03:47 AM

It sure has changed enormously. You guys have put a TON of work into this game. I really need to go back and do a full Let's Play of it on my channel at some point.

Thanks. Yeah, definitely been an eye opening and productive year

Definitely check it out again and tell us what's good/bad/can be improved :)

Gray Mage

2019-05-02, 09:19 AM

I've picked key 4BFCW-87K9Z-FIR46. Will try to take it out for a spin as soon as I have more time, maybe later tonight or tomorrow.

Alent

2019-05-02, 12:29 PM

Life's kind of crazy over here, but I'll give it another spin.

Driderman

2019-05-03, 04:19 AM

Looks good, I'd love to try it out but all these people who are "totally going to actually try it out at some point" already took all the keys available :smalltongue:

deuterio12

2019-05-03, 07:19 AM

So with the new campaign system, what's exactly supposed to be the purpose of the cheap grunt troops in contrast to heroes?

Also a tutorial to help with base management may be useful since I'm basically going blind in what to upgrade.

Heroes (and enemies) having some lines when they drop or are dropped would be nice too.

DaedalusMkV

2019-05-03, 10:39 AM

So, I was able to play for two hours or so. Not really as much as I'd like, but enough for some first impressions.

-The Ranger tutorial for grappling hook actually required me to miss a shot and hit a tree by accident to realize that the ability would pull trees down onto enemies. Maybe I'm dumb, but the tutorial could probably be cleaned up a bit to specifically point out that entirely necessary use of it instead of just saying 'look for opportunities to crowd-control'.
-You probably need a tutorial of some kind for the campaign mode. As someone who played many, many hours of Heroes 2 and 3 back in the day it was fairly easy for me to get into it, but someone unfamiliar with the genre is going to immediately flounder when thrown into a situation like that.
-Maybe it's just personal preference, but having a silly, bad pun at the centre of your gameplay ("beetcoins") makes me groan and shake my head.
-It feels like units are a bit too fast and mobile relative to the size of the combat maps. Two move actions pretty much takes any character from anywhere on the map to anywhere on the map. If the maps were bigger it would probably be okay, or if the units were a bit slower.
-Knock-back attacks seem disproportionately emphasized in the game. Maybe it changes later-on, but for now my melee characters use 'kick' three or four times for every use of any other ability. The fact that any sane use of physics attacks nullifies at least one enemy's next turn, guaranteed, makes them utterly necessary to combat in a way that totally de-emphasizes all other attacks.
-The difficulty scale on the enemies seems... Badly off. I ran into plenty of three skull fights no problem, just use environmental effects to take them down quick and painlessly. Then my first one-skull fight against a group of spiderlings got two heroes killed because there were six of them and they're horrendously fast, allowing all six to attack my melee hero and kill her in one turn after my shooter missed. I really wasn't expecting an 'easier' encounter to be dramatically more dangerous than a 'harder' encounter, and that event was pretty much the end for the night (and that run of the campaign. I'll start over again the next time I play).

Overall, I do quite like it. X-com meets Heroes of Might and Magic is certainly something that appeals to me personally, and things look and feel smooth in gameplay.

Gray Mage

2019-05-03, 01:47 PM

I've also managed to play a while, did the tutorials and started the campaign. I must agree with Deadalus, as someone that has played X-COM but not the games he's mentioned, I must say that I'm quite a bit lost about the whole base thing. It kind of reminds me of a RTS game, but by only being descriptions and the way that the buildings and upgrades are placed I have to admit that just throwing the player that way is very confusing.

I've also missed on the ranger tutorial and hit the tree. :smalltongue:
In retrospect it seems logical based on the previous gameplay and information on the thread, but maybe a hint would be nice. I love how fragile the trees are and I agree that crowd control seems way too strong. :smallbiggrin:

I also feel that not only the move per map is off, but the characters move way too fast in the animations. It seems like when they are moving or attacking that they are weightless (I know it's EA, but it's something to keep in mind).

And beetcoins is a joke that I think will age very fast, if it hasn't already.

All in all, I've actually liked it. Based on the description on the thread the "open world" threw me off a bit, but I'm a sucker for turn based, strategic games. Will mess around more, and looking foward to how it shapes up. It has potential and the focus on destructible terrain is fresh to me. :smallsmile:

Edit: Another thing that I'm not sure if I'm playing wrong or if my expectations are off, but the melee classes seem very fragile. In something like X-COM in which every human unit is ranged this is ok, as it enforces good positioning, but melee wanting to be up front and the small maps means that I'm getting crowded easily as it seems like I already spawn in range, I think. I'll try and pay more attention to that. Also, I don't think I've seen a Medic/Cleric hero yet? Someone with heals.

Also, not sure how I feel about the minions, they seem very disposable compared to heroes (probably intended in some way). It also seems like I need to treck back to the base in order to refill them if they were to fall in battle.
Also, something of a thematic nature, I'm not sure about having the initial hero units be plot focused or "important". Again, comparing with X-COM (sorry about the constant comparisons) and Darkest Dungeon (an all time favorite of mine) the units you play, while important assets are never critical and while they are not "spendable" they are more distant from the plot and virtually interchangeable between each other.

DaedalusMkV

2019-05-05, 12:53 AM

So, I played a fair bit more. Finished chapter 1 of the campaign, as far as exists currently. I did quite enjoy it, as I figured I would. Mostly, my previous thoughts were pretty much confirmed. Physics attacks do get replaced to some degree as your heroes get more powerful and you can just kill weak enemies rather than stunning them one turn and finishing them the next, and in particular once the Wizards start picking up AoE attacks and the Barbarian gets the ability to stack AP gain effects to great proportions the breadth of strategy expands a lot beyond 'knockback is all you need'. With that said, it was still very, very common for me to end most battles with far more damage dealt via knockback effects than anything else, often by a factor of 2-3 to one, and challenging enemies are all about disabling with physics attacks all day every day, which does make it feel like the game might get a bit repetitive over time.

So far, I really question the value of minion recruitment buildings, both in the towns and on the map. They were amazing in the Heroes games since assembling the most powerful stacks of creatures possible was how you won, so any boost to recruitment was a big deal. Here, you really only need one or two minions per party and you only need to replace them if you mess up and get them killed, so I found that once I had a minion or two available more recruitment just... Didn't matter. Building up to the highest-tier units might have made a difference, but I started the game able to recruit Priests and never got access to anything more useful than a unit with a repeatable ranged heavy debuff plus damage with a healing ability as a bonus.

Hero balance seems nice and solid. Paladins are great front-liners that provide repeatable party-wide healing and help lock down annoying enemy ranged units. Barbarians are quick and great at picking off weaker enemies, and can be used to cause some serious damage to nearby enemies with a bit of setup. Both have Kick, which is the single most useful attack in the entire game overall. Rangers are the god-queens of ranged physics attacks, especially once they get to ignore direction and just bounce enemies into each other constantly. Once they're levelled up they provide all the crowd-control you could want. And Mages get unique access to AoE attacks which is just great. Overall I found myself wanting a nice balance of heroes at all times, since they play nicely off one another.

The game seems pretty decently polished aside from the lack of tutorials. Units look pretty good, visuals are appealing. It's still very clearly incomplete, but what is there seems promising.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with the game so far, and look forwards to coming back to it once there's more to play.

deuterio12

2019-05-05, 02:24 AM

So far, I really question the value of minion recruitment buildings, both in the towns and on the map. They were amazing in the Heroes games since assembling the most powerful stacks of creatures possible was how you won, so any boost to recruitment was a big deal. Here, you really only need one or two minions per party and you only need to replace them if you mess up and get them killed, so I found that once I had a minion or two available more recruitment just... Didn't matter. Building up to the highest-tier units might have made a difference, but I started the game able to recruit Priests and never got access to anything more useful than a unit with a repeatable ranged heavy debuff plus damage with a healing ability as a bonus.

So, you went for lots of mixed hero-minion parties? Because I basically just got two three-heroes parties rampaging accross the map and didn't see much use for minions besides garrisoning the main base.

DaedalusMkV

2019-05-05, 02:45 AM

So, you went for lots of mixed hero-minion parties? Because I basically just got two three-heroes parties rampaging accross the map and didn't see much use for minions besides garrisoning the main base.
I started with two groups of two heroes and a minion, and added heroes to both groups when I got the party size limit to 4 and minions to both groups at party size 5 (though the game was basically over by that point). I found that having someone disposable in the party was very handy, since there are occasional circumstances where losing someone isn't really avoidable and it's better to lose a Minion than a hero that costs twice as much or more. Plus, frankly, some Minions just do certain jobs better than any hero does. Priests are a point-and-click 'nope' to enemy ranged attackers (just flank and blind them, they won't hit anything after that) that happens to have a panic-button heal to make sure your heroes never, ever die so honestly I'd much rather have one of those than a duplicate low-level hero. Hell, heroes don't even really surpass Priests in usefulness in any regard until level 8 or 10. I didn't bother to garrison my town at all. Why bother, you can recruit units instantly and will definitely get at least one turn's warning before being attacked. Building units that aren't going to be going out and taking over the map for you is pointless, really.

Heroes are definitely better than Minions once you've levelled them up a bunch, but the mixed groups worked very well in just letting me steamroll the map very quickly overall. I was never in any danger of losing whatsoever in my campaign; by the time I even ran into any enemy packs my groups just rolled over them without taking losses and kept going. It's a mentality I immediately settled into carried straight over from Heroes of Might and Magic: Move fast, never stop, take as much of the map as you can as fast as you can and keep going down the tech tree as fast as humanly possible.

deuterio12

2019-05-05, 05:27 AM

Hmmm, yeah when you put it like that priests sound pretty badass with their starting abilities to support the actual heroes.

And I can also dig the "meat shield" argument, in particular against freaking goblin bombers that deal area auto-hit 8 damage.

Speaking of which the Nature/Troll faction has an upgrade that grants +1 max HP per kill (no cap) and seems to apply only to minions so seems like they could "level up" their minions kinda off.

adamzeira

2019-05-07, 11:56 AM

Awesome feedback guys :)

It sounds like the start needs to be simplified in some way. XCOM is very simple in that it has no parties or world movement, just a list of soldiers some of which are "wounded" and others are not. simple. And Heroes is simple in that you start with 1 hero with 7 creature slots, and it takes you a long time to fill those slots, so your goal at the start is fairly simple - fill as many of the slots and make your hero stronger

But in FT you start with 2 parties, each with 3 slots and 2 heroes, and a town that should maybe have clearer "I want this" upgrades. Trying to think of a way to simplify this, but not sure what it can be

The other unclear thing (to us as well) is the role of minions vs heroes. It's a work in progress, and we're happy to hear suggestions :)

The idea behind letting people hire minions is that it makes it easier to understand what the AI does because it's paralelled - the AI conquers dwellings and amasses an army. you understand that because you can do exactly the same (even though their parties are composed of minions instead of heroes)

Happy to hear suggestions :)

In the meantime implementing these things. They're not big fixes but small ones to alleviate some issues until we make a decision on which real solution to go with
1. Changing it so towns don't open on minion purchasing, but on town building, then hero purchasing, then minions, to clarify minions are less important
2. Filling parties with a peasant to maybe make starting easier
3. Removing over-usage of the word beetcoin

I think you guys are finding physics attacks to be too easy because you're smart and should up the difficulty :) Yes they're overpowered, but a lot of players are not smart enough to figure them out. They're part of the fun, you have to look around and think about good ideas using the environment instead of the trivial "use X ability on Y enemy" like most tactics games do, in the same way that XCOM works

Toric

2019-05-07, 06:26 PM

I think you guys are finding physics attacks to be too easy because you're smart and should up the difficulty :) Yes they're overpowered, but a lot of players are not smart enough to figure them out. They're part of the fun, you have to look around and think about good ideas using the environment instead of the trivial "use X ability on Y enemy" like most tactics games do, in the same way that XCOM works

Having tried out the game for the last three days, I can agree with this. I'm terrible at the actual XCOM and I have about a 1 in 3 hero loss ratio in the campaign. (Granted I save-scum so I don't ACTUALLY lose any heroes.) I started a skirmish as the Undead and was struggling to overcome three Goblin Rangers with my two lv1 heroes plus skele-peasant.

The overworld reminds me of the original Disciples game. Which I liked for the overworld exploration and not so much for the turn-based combat.

I agree with prior feedback that the paladin's skill tree seems lacking in variety compared to the others. The Savage's is set up as a series of plateaus and explosions, the ranger's is pretty consistent improvement, and of course the mage has too many good options. But the paladin comes across as more of a stay-in-full-cover bard than an armored lead-by-courage sort. This was highlighted when I got a trinket that gives any Paladin offensive power the Blinding property. This included... her basic attack, her kick, and her already-blinding ranged attack. And a ground pound at very high levels. Which made for a lackluster item in my eyes.