Subset Games Forum

Posted: **Mon Sep 24, 2012 12:59 pm**

Yeah he's already been suspended once, I'll wager he's only a few posts away from another, or even a ban. But hey, he's not bothered about that right? He thinks the game is broken anyway.

Posted: **Mon Sep 24, 2012 7:11 pm**

nfiea2 wrote: Why bother
I tired being nice and I was told that 1 I was lying and that 2 he couldn;t understand what I was lying about
these dev suckers need to stfu and I will tell them so
the devs need to be told what is broken so they can fix it
these fanboys need to just stfu and keep sucking and i'll tell them how to fix the game

Yes, there is no imaginable way people could like features that you don't like, they must be mindless fanboys who love the game regardless of any and all features.

Anti-Troll instinct satisfied, proceeding with actual post.

I really like this game, after the first few playthroughs you start to see repeating events and ways to deal with them. For example, I always try to upgrade piloting, sensors and the medbay, get an engy crewmember, and get a teleporter asap. This unlocks advanced options on a large portion of events. e.g. plague, malfunctioning defence system, Disapearing ship in nebula, automated ship guarding cache ect. ect. Granted I can't always get them all but when I do they often make back their cost, and so given the option I will pick those. Scrap management is also very important. I could upgrade weapons to use this bomb, but what if I find a store that will sell me something better? Or if I need better shields for an asteroid field? Granted I still get screwed by randomness sometimes (my personal favorite is 5 mantis boarders, boarding event and enemy with teleporter, with a 3 man human crew and a flaming medbay) then there literally can be nothing you can do, but you can reliably get to sector 5-6. I would hate the randomness in here IF it took longer than it does to make progress. If I spent a week of gaming to get tons of progress then to lose it randomly I would never play this game. I admit I am the kind of gamer who plays the, "cinematic experience" games. (the ones with the nigh instant revivals) But that is because those games all have long difficult campaigns that take ages to complete and losing all your progress is actually frustrating.

Posted: **Mon Sep 24, 2012 9:20 pm**

I agree with what a lot of people have said. I sure don't want to watch a movie, I expect my actions to influence the outcome. If I can't change what happens based on my actions, I have no potential to improve.

For the most part I love the game. The graphics are good, the backstory is awesome. I love a lot of quirks about it like using the air locks to put out fires. I like the UI a lot. I think it's very well made.

But it seems like it's stuck between an arcade game and an RPG. I have played about a dozen games now and every time I start to do pretty good, I run across a game ender node. Something where there is no way I could win. I'm completely and utterly outgunned, or my ship is drained of all power, etc. I see the "good job, your score was xxxxx". So that makes it feel like an arcade game. I almost feel myself dropping in a quarter to play something with a joystick and 2 fire buttons.

The problem is those kind of games don't line up with something where you invest an hour to get through the first 4 nodes making carefully calculated choices to have the game just plain ended by a single node. It's not like I made a series of bad choices and ran out of fuel, or I made bad upgrades in my ship.

What this game needs is balancing. It's a great and awesome framework, but you need to do something with the balance. Believe me, I'm a committed customer, I gave you as much for this game as I did for Borderlands II, which was balanced by a team of 20 people that had over 10000 hours of game play just for testing and balance.

I'm not expecting the same out of a 2 person company, but I'd encourage you to look at some of the games of chris sawyer. He wrote them in assembly, he did all his own graphics and sound, but he also tested the crap out of game balance.

I hope you guys keep at it, i'm excited to see it evolve.

Posted: **Mon Sep 24, 2012 9:42 pm**

Jason when you were out gunned did you try running? I feel like there is always a way out of a situation though some of the time it was a decision you made earlier that resulted in your death. Of course there are some games where you just have a crappy streak of luck.

Posted: **Mon Sep 24, 2012 9:53 pm**

The game has had plenty of balancing.

The game has many subtle strategies with suprisingly large impact. Have you ever used a Zoltan to power the stealth system and then move him out of the room when the stealth duration was over? congrats you just got an extra power bar you can use. Got 3 zoltans? 3 powerbars!

Posted: **Mon Sep 24, 2012 10:13 pm**

Gorlom wrote:The game has had plenty of balancing.

The game has many subtle strategies with suprisingly large impact. Have you ever used a Zoltan to power the stealth system and then move him out of the room when the stealth duration was over? congrats you just got an extra power bar you can use. Got 3 zoltans? 3 powerbars!

I tried this trick while stealth was active and promptly lost stealth. Didn't consider that I could wait for it to be over and then move him while its on cool down.

Posted: **Mon Sep 24, 2012 10:14 pm**

Hissatsu wrote:This is a roguelike, and it is supposed to be about experience, not about learning to win 100%. It is not supposed to be fair. Actually, in most roguelikes, you "win" like once in a hundred playthroughs. And games are much more severe, punishing, and complex (like, you dont know what items give what effect, you dont know what skill will be useful when, you might never get something useful to your character, etc).

FTL is very forgiving for a roguelike.

About randomness - any game with randomness is about risk management. And this is what is fun about it. If you dont like it play Chess or Go or... whatever non-random game you find. Then it will be about strategy and tactics only. Randomness is about evaluating your chances and risk vs reward and this is great, because it is both always hard (you are mostly always in danger) and always cool (because every now and then you pull off something impossible, like dodging three rockets in a row with 20% evasion). Plus, humans are known to be bad at evaluating probabilities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem) and it makes this even more interesting.

I know randomness may get you frustrated and you may think you got screwed by a system - and yes, sometimes game just kills you without any mathematical chance of survival, but this is truly happening very rarely. Generally, very time you die you have that feeling that "it may have gone different if i have did this differently". If you cant stand randomless at all - then roguelikes and games like that are not for you. I, for example, could not stand randomness in Battle for Wesnoth, even though its a great game, playing it w/o save/load is just frustration all around because you lose your experienced warriors because of sheer unluck and it hurts a lot. But FTL, after two times i failed and got frustrated, i got over it.

This game, as any roguelike, is about experience. Its not about winning (winning over and over again becomes boring very fast). Its about being in real environment. Its about the most reallistic experience you are ever going to get in game, even though graphics are outdated (and most roguelikes intentionally use ascii graphics even in modern day). It is most reallistic especially because it is NOT fair!

For example, if you play any modern computer game, you can never hit a dead end. Like, if you're stuck in a lift, you always have some way to jam out. If you crash land on a helicopter, its just a plot device and next level will take you on whatever place you landed into. If you are given a choice with no going back, both choices are valid and neither will be a dead end. Wherever you are, there is always a way forward. If you fail - i.e. die, you just restart from a checkpoint, or even a save you made 1 second before.

In roguelike, its like real life. In real life if you happen to get stuck under a crushed building, you never know wether someone will save you or not. If you happen to crashland, you never know if you'll survive or die of hunger or some creature will kill you. Its life, and its not tailored especially for you to always have your way. That is what's great in roguelikes - they are too like real life, not an artificially crafted experience, they are about real actions and real consequences, not about some plot that you go through. You choices really matter because you may lose your game, permanently, losing all progress, and all you achieved so far. Etc.

PS: If you want to not get frustrated with randomness of the game, learn to play it. Learn how to counter certain random events. Learn not to risk when you cannot afford losing. Do not play heavilly random-dependant ships (like Stealth B). I was frustrated at normal, i switched to easy, completed game several times, now i switched back to normal and i understand that you just need to play differently to have a good chance of survival. You have to be ready for very bad situations, you have to know when to run, you have to always consider getting redundant systems up "just in case", you have to plan for worst... and it pays off when you finally start beating the game on normal!

Then why do the enemy ships always start with 1 shield in Sector 1 and 4 shields in sector 8. Thats not random. Thats scripted.

All I'm saying is, if we have to put up with this random crap the whole game, why does every single enemy ship level up steadily through every sector?

Posted: **Mon Sep 24, 2012 10:22 pm**

GoldenShadowGS wrote: Then why do the enemy ships always start with 1 shield in Sector 1 and 4 shields in sector 8. Thats not random. Thats scripted.

I believe Matthew has mentioned that they use some kind of point allocation system to determine how strong the opponents are... what kind of combos they can get etc.
Obviously they get more points in later sectors. It's not totally random, but I'd say it's random enough.

Posted: **Mon Sep 24, 2012 10:43 pm**

Stoygroff wrote:You've clearly haven't been spending nearly enough time playing roguelikes

Just because a mechanic is common doesn't mean it is necessarily the best way to do it, it just means its popular in the genre. I have to agree with the OP. The game forces you to make decisions without any real feedback so it winds up being a guessing game.

It's completely possible to make a roguelike with random elements that still lets you actually hone reusable skills, build tactics, and rewards keen judgement.

Posted: **Tue Sep 25, 2012 12:12 pm**

Aufklarer wrote: After all this is a roguelike your meant to fail occasionally.

I guess some of us feel we fail constantly.

I personally don't fault the game for being hard or unforgiving.
It happens. Even the best laid plan can go down in a heap of smoke.
I kind of wish they were more forgiving with Save/Load on Easy: so many games I've had a prime setup, saved and died not long after, and could never quite get that fortuitous start again.

I don't think every game should end with a boss kill, I'd like to get at least one before my hundredth playthrough though.

Drasha wrote:Jason when you were out gunned did you try running? I feel like there is always a way out of a situation though some of the time it was a decision you made earlier that resulted in your death. Of course there are some games where you just have a crappy streak of luck.

I get this advice a lot, and I find often that unless my goal from the outset was to run, it's hard to run once a battle is underway, since often by then if you feel outgunned you're probably already taking a beating and it can be very hard to escape without taking heavy damage.

Then there's the problem of running with disabled systems and landing right in the middle of another fight. I actually just lost a game between this post and edit because a single solar flare lit half my ship on fire, including the O2 and Medbay. I couldn't put out the fires in the O2 bay, so Game Over after literally two jumps XD

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