Messages

1

General / Re: A bit of Player Data and Pure Opinion

« on: October 18, 2013, 12:46:22 pm »

I'm pretty sure that the dialogue is initiated purely based on proximity, and ignores stealth. Anyways, it doesn't matter because as you said, loot and exp.

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General / Re: A bit of Player Data and Pure Opinion

« on: October 17, 2013, 02:16:01 pm »

@Elhazzared: Trying to sneak past them while they are busy with the rathounds didn't work for me, because the bandit that initiates dialogue didn't move very far  So even after they started to deal with the rathounds, when I moved close enough (trying to get to the nearby area transition), I got the usual dialogue.

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General / Re: A bit of Player Data and Pure Opinion

« on: October 16, 2013, 11:27:17 am »

@Elhazzared: I gotta admit, I hadn't considered this, because I hadn't noticed how anomalously cheap grenades are compared to everything else. So I tried it as you said, and while it takes a bit of luck to get a good throw, it certainly makes those 3 bandits go down relatively easily. On my first play through, I defeated them using PSI punch and a bit of damage tanking etc. but it does go to show that there are multiple solutions, which is good.

By the way, is there any dialogue path in that encounter that doesn't result in combat, with the bandits always getting the alpha strike? That is ignoring the fact that you can wait for the rathounds to distract them, which doesn't always happen immediately.

Anyway, I have to concede @Styg that the early game is OK, if very unforgiving in places, and the 3 bandits on the way to GMS is a learn to play thing rather than a balance problem.

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General / Re: A bit of Player Data and Pure Opinion

« on: October 15, 2013, 10:00:28 pm »

@Styg: I agree that the pistol and crossbow are more than adequate for rathounds, allowing you do the first few easy quests (rathound tissue, retrieve watch, generators, catch 3 hoppers etc.), and this gets you some way towards level 4. Once you've done those quests, you'll have the GMS compound and package delivery quests to do. For that, you have to get past the bandits north of SGS (and you can't stealth past them). Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems a pretty extreme difficulty spike, and the 5mm pistol doesn't have enough dakka. You can get an SMG as a quest reward from the old dude, but it doesn't come with ammo. Even with ammo for the SMG, it's questionable whether you can survive 3 bandits at once. There's also the improved crossbow that you can get in the generator quest doesn't put out enough DPS, and if you haven't invested in crossbow skill it's ineffective, because you are forced to keep your distance from the bandit melee guy. I think he has one of those electric hammers in my current playthrough!

So after getting crushed by the bandits and deciding to deal with them later, you can look for other things to do, like explore some more (meet the Ironheads and get stomped). You can go to Junkyard (though you won't have received the drill circuit board quest by that point), or meet the siphoners (likely resulting in death unless you run away immediately). It just seems like the difficulty level right now results in a lot of trial-and-error, to find out what enemies you can actually handle, and a lot of save-scumming, running away mid-fight to heal etc.

5

General / Re: A bit of Player Data and Pure Opinion

« on: October 15, 2013, 12:45:06 pm »

Regarding the burrower lair, I cleared it after many deaths and much save-scumming by using the cheesiest, most metagamey tactics I could think of, along with (OP?) PSI abilities, lots of downtime going to the doc to heal and sitting next to 'shrooms. I used a PSI vial at one point, when I had to deal with 2 burrowers at the same time. The reward was underwhelming, but I wasn't that bothered.

The thing about the difficulty in Underrail is that the harder fights seem something of a puzzle, where you have to figure out how to best exploit the environment (vents, doors, multiple entrances to area, mines, exposive barrels etc.) + enemy behaviour quirks + predictable AI in order to get the "easy" win. I say "easy" because that's a relative term in Underrail. If you attempt the puzzle incorrectly, you generally die or your position becomes so hopeless that you reload. It makes victory quite satisfying, but this puzzle aspect of the game feels odd. I really can't imagine ever finishing Underrail in "Iron Man" mode (starting from level 1) without memorising the entire game down to the last number.

@Styg: You say that you don't have much trouble getting started, but as the developer, you have detailed knowledge that ordinary players won't have. Even after playing the game for 50 hours, there's still a lot that I am uncertain about. So I think you have to expect a large disconnect between how difficult you find and it how difficult the average player finds it, given that they don't have access to the underlying data for everything.

@Styg: One other thing - if PSI is not meant to be viable at low levels, perhaps you should consider building that into the structure of the game? That is, make PSI become available when the player reaches some plot point. That way, you can be fairly sure that the player has gained enough exp to be at least a certain level. Removing some choice from the player idea is probably anathema to some (dumbing down), but there's a reason why many AAA games go easy on the player at the beginning, which is that at the start of any game, new players severely lack the information they need to make informed choices.

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General / Re: A bit of Player Data and Pure Opinion

« on: October 14, 2013, 06:26:56 pm »

I've just finished all the quests that I can do, and I must say that I'm astounded that one guy has produced something of this quality. I have some criticisms, though.

My first criticism is that everything is crazy expensive for low level characters. The merchants rip you off to the point that it's not worth buying most things from them.

This means, perhaps most importantly, that PSI isn't economically viable at low levels due to the cost of replenishing it, unless you enjoy standing next to mindshrooms. The need to hang around mindshrooms after almost every kill introduces an element of tedium and makes the "Shroomhead" feat mandatory for a character using PSI. Inability to afford PSI vials effectively means you are limited to 40% of your maximum PSI all of the time.

It's not just PSI vials, though. Gear like grenades, to even the odds in the more difficult encounters, is prohibitively expensive. Most of the time, enemies come in groups, which is what makes encounters really difficult. Crafting requires a huge investment of skill points, to the detriment of basic combat ability, and low level characters simply won't find the required components anyway.

So, I think the game needs rebalancing for low level characters. Low end stuff to aid in combat should be easier to come by or available at correspondingly low prices from merchants. High end gear can remain suitably expensive.

My other criticism is that many encounters require tactics that I would deem to be meta-gaming. For example, when I met the bandit guys near the siphoner pools, I really had no chance of winning unless I used both entrances to the area to kite them and cause them to become strung out and split up. So I would enter by one entrance, do some damage to the nearest guy, leave, enter through the other entrance, do some damage, leave, and repeat. Between entrances I would go and stand next to a mindshroom for a while. Eventually I killed them all, but having to resort to meta-gaming seems indicative that balance is off.

Despite all that, I think this game is really cool and I hope it's going to get some more content in future (and maybe a balance pass!).