Messages

316

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

« on: February 01, 2014, 02:20:03 pm »

No, I don't mean more useful, I mean more useless because crafting lost even more use than it had before and the problem it had before was that you could hardly use crafting to stay ahead of the curve, it was always better to just buy items because they were better and by the time you could craft better, welcome the new area with much better items than you can craft... Now crafting can't even be ued as a means to make money.

Let's take your example here. No one is buying, extra chemicals... And why would I have the skills for that when it's a waste to go into crafting? Crafting meds I'll only go as far as the minimum needed skills for psi boosters and that is if i find it I really need that badly.
You leather example is, let's waste a ton of leather and armor and make some repair kits. First you are wasting lots of money into making repair kits, completly inneficient (not to mention waste skill points into a crafting system that isn't exactly good) and then there is a limit of how many they buy while I'll be accumlating those like crazy for really no purpose.

If you think the item system is fun like this... well that is you I guess. I like the possible interactions, but I don't like that the game tries to force you waste money for no good reason.

I don't think it'sfun to skip any possible money unless you are doing it for RP reasons. As in I won't help this guy cause I don't like him. Skipping money just because I already have a decent amount is not smart and while you say it is because you still have more than enough money, you are only saving yourself the bother it takes to get the extra money, I say the problem is not the bother that you have to go to get the extra money but rather the game mechanics itself which are not good.

317

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

« on: February 01, 2014, 04:20:03 am »

Now this is only my own opinion. But smart looting is looting all, if you sell all you gain more and quite frankly you may say don't bother with the worthless stuff and yet you forget that the so called worthless stuff is worth at very least 1/3 of your total possible income. just the small experience I've done I had 4 hearths, 6 livers and 2 leather pieces just to name the best of the so called worthless stuf. That is worth a ton of money and this maintains throughout the game. breaking stuff or leaving it behind is a huge loss, it's not smart at all in my opinion.

Even if I kept stuff near a trader and went off to continue. It'sd come back, with any luck I'd sell half a dozen items and then would have another 20 more on top of what I already have. It doesn't solves the problem.

And yeah, I don't doubt traders could run out of money, I've managed that in the previous patch so it wouldn't surprise me if they did now. The problem starts with the money being handle in (again my opinion) the wrong way. they should not have an inventory slot and even if they must absolutly have one, it shouldn't be limited to normal stacks. Similarly, merchants should just have an unlimited amount of cash!

And I know you want to try to make me see the good points. I've said it before, this patch has a lot of good stuff, but it brought a lot of bad stuff too, the problem for me is that th bad far outweights the good in the game at this point in time I really cannot even play it, I'd go insane and I tried giving it a go just to be fair and see how bad it was and it was just as bad as I expected (again this is my opinion), it completly ruins any fun i might have with the game... It could even be true that right now, even if i just picked half a dozen items per quest and still made more money than before and everything is cheaper, I just couldn't do it, it completly wrecks all the fun in the game and it's so incredibly frustating that I cannot even put it into words.

318

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

« on: February 01, 2014, 03:20:46 am »

I belive it should be an option from the game. at very least it acknowledges it as being a serious problem to many players and makes sure to at least ensure that they enjoy the game without the need to relly on anyone to make the game good for them.

Also you first say that the gymics serve their purpose by limiting the player to what he can do and then later on in respose to another comment I make you say they restrict but don't limit after all... I do belive you realise that in reality they just don't limit at all. They make you waste more time and that's it. Some people will just not care for it and leave stuff behind or recicle some stuff. This isn't the game limiting them, they are limiting themselfs so that they can enjoy the game. To some people having to limit themself in order to enjoy the game means that they are not enjoying themselves at all. Let me tell you how I (and I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd think exactly the same way) would do if I was to play this game... Start the game, do a quest, loot everything, maybe pause in between if I need to go and sell stuff cause my carry limit was hit. I get to the base/town and sell a few things... Well I can't sell more but I need to sell all of this junk so I let the game running in the background for a hour and a half, then I go back to it and sell more stuff. I do thise several times probably to the point that I spend a whole day doing part of a quest and the rest is just selling. Now tell me how much fun this is and how immersive the gameplay will be for me and like me, many others. At the end of the day, this has not served the purpose of making me skip the less valuable items, it has only wasted a lot of my time and will eventually (sooner than later) make me stop playing altogether... So yes, it's is a gymic that does not serve it's purpose.

319

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

« on: February 01, 2014, 02:41:59 am »

Lazymonk - What inventory restrictions? You have a carry limit? Make multiple trips. You have a merchant that only buys a limited amount of suplies per reset, wait until you can sell everything... You only create downtime and frustation here you are not limiting anything in any real way. Want to limit loot? Limit the drops because there is no way around that, if there is a way around, at best you just create time waste.

One thing is to complain about a game being difficult or needing to read a manual (Although I find reading a manual in these day and ages something wrong. Games should have a tutorial to deal with that instead of making people waste time reading a lot of stuff because a tutorai lexplains all and much more quickly, not to mention in a way that doesn't leaves room for confusion), another thing is to complain that the game has a huge downtime that does not ends up serving the purpose for which it was created which leads to frustation. These are my point but we do agree, so long as there is at least the option to remove the waste of time everyone can enjoy the game in the way that pleases them better.

Banggunner - Crit a sniper shot? just use aimed shot feat. You also have the sniper feat which although it makes no crit, damages are even higher than crits, either way both skills lead to one shot kill on anything! likewise, a mk5 grenade nearly oneshots anything except the very toughest opponents which are left on a sliver of health with a bad roll... I've never seen an overload deal enough damage to kill, even on a crit and I tend to do full psion builds... Only the flamethrower stands a better chance at one shooting stuff and even then it usually doesn't if it's a somewhat tough opponent, even humans can survive it... I still feel that every other build has a much better bang for the money at the time due to he cost of psi boosters and there not being a way to recover at least some psi for free between fights. You do are right that we can craft psi boosters but how many will you craft? It's not like mindshrooms pop up in large quantities in every map, not to mention that no one sells them.

My personal experience with Psi and a guns/grenade build is that Psi ran more money before but I had shroomhead to recover me 40% of the psi prior to every battle. After a while I sued a few boosters when I knew a fight was gonna be more psi intensive and needed more psi than just 40%. Now I am absolutly sure that with no passive psi recover it's much more expensive to run a psi user than a gun freak... As for whether or not it makes difference up ahead... All I can say is this. When I left for the junkyard I felt like I had a ton of money, when I got there I was like... ok, things are stupidly expensive so I don't have money to even aford anything. When I finished the junkyard I felt like I had a ton of money (My psi user had about 1/3 more money at the time but again, shroomhead was usefull back then) the thing is. I'm sure that's how economy is balanced, when you go into the next town, your money is going to not be as much as you think. Even if things don't go as high, forget thinking you're stinking rich, you'll maybe buy a gun and that's it, you're broke again. At least that is how I feel it will be going forward taking the previous examples.

Ivan Baijo - While the pawn shop might look like a good idea, it doesn't solves anything does it? You are still wasting a load of time to sell your items or you sell it at a very low value which just means a huge money loss anyway. The idea is to remove the time waste of the game. To keep you going from mission to side mission and from side mission to exploration without having to... Let's go make a round through all the merchants, try to sell everything and if I can't, wait 90 minutes for a shop refresh, until all is sold or at least the vast majority and you don't feel like caring about only a couple items left.

Edit: Another thing I cmpletly forgot was that this system even makes crafting a lot more useless. Now sure, you can craft stuff to use which is still great. But when you have materials that you don't need what do you do? You craft stuff to sell cause it earns you a few extra bucks, it was one of the greatest advantages of crafting. Now it's kinda nullified because either the item may not be on demand, or it may just not be on high enough demand that you can sell as much as you can craft... Again, just wait loads of time or just don't make the items, lose more money (which again puts crafting in a worse spot).

320

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

« on: January 31, 2014, 07:57:08 pm »

Well it is a fact that the vast majority of people like looting. If you are forced not to loot or loot less anyway then it detracts from the looting part of the game... No game in which there is a loot system is it made in order for you not to pick up everything.

It is good you are having some fun and I'm sure many others are. I wonder how many people who bought the game and don't use the foruns actually enjoy this though. I also fear for the success of the game once it's fully release to try and go forward with this because quite frankly, I can't see that many people enjoying this looting system... I only hope that soon there will be an option included to just disable buy limits from merchants and maybe one to disable weight limits... The last one not being a major gripe but it would be nice just as well. At the end of the days these are just gymics that waste time rather than serve the purpose they intend.

321

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

« on: January 31, 2014, 02:45:05 pm »

epili - Lose a coin here and a coin there and you're lossing quite a few because you are forced to do multiple trades. Not so hurtful up ahead but it is a pain in the ass in the beggining.

Banggunner - sure you can stash stuff. That only means that the amount of stuff you have to sell keeps on increasing if you simply sell what you can, stash the rest and continue the game.

The new economic system does not discourages players from picking everything up, in fact it's naive to think that it will. The vast majority of players will pick everything up and will end up so frustated trying to sell everything that they will rather give up the game altogether thinking it was poorly designed, they won't even think of what were the reasonings behind the system.

It doesn't matter what the loot I can't sell is compared to what I get later on, I'm still not being able to sell loot now, loot that would give me more money and make me able to buy more stuff that I need.

One more thing reguarding any RPG that has a loot system. Looting is a major part of the game, it's one of the most core fun factors of the game and what are you doing? Saying, loot only the good stuff, leave the rest... Fun factor is sinking like the titanic.

As for the Psi. I am not sure you read what I said or possibly didn't undestood although I have other posts in this matter. Going up ahead, yes Psi is superior for it lack of need of repairs, buying upgraded weapon versions, etc... But starting it's a huge money sink! The disadvantage of the starting Psi to any other combat oriented build is huge in terms of investment... It's even fair to say that going forward it can be bigger than anything else because even if you use Psi you will still use other weapons which means still invest in ammo and new weapons as upgraded versions become available. Now obviously you don't invest much into repairs except armor wise perhaps and spend much less in ammunition, but still, you spend a lot more into psi boosters because let's be honest, 3 sniper rounds are a lot cheaper than a psi booster. Even making a grenade mk5 is a lot cheaper than a psi booster and much more effective than any spell combinations you can throw at the enemy for the cost of one psi booster.

What I mean here is that shroomhead was a decent feat that balanced this out, if there was a problem with it was having to go back to he nearest mindshroom to recover which resulted in a lot of down time... The changes not only made the skill totally useless, but made Psi builds a lot more expensive and by comparison, less balanced especially early on.

322

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

« on: January 31, 2014, 01:04:52 am »

Well, it still is quite random. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a step in the right direction and indeed there is always stealth but it's hardly worth not taking stealth and go into combat not knowing who will act first which can just turn into you getting murdered in the first round of combat. The funny thing is that what improves initiative, also improves stealth so it would always be benefitial to take stealth with the abillities that grant initiative which in a way kinda renders it less useful. I think that only one characteristic should count towards it, the one that does not beneficts stealth and again, I still think the randomness is wrong. I can understand what you say that it's not supposed to dominate but it should, it should be an active replacement for the use of stealth... You know, give other options... But that's just my opinion anyway.

As for the merchant. WellI belive quinton buys animal organs, he wasn't when I tried to sell him the stuff but I too thought it would make sense he would. Never the less it is still true that the whole limited buy system is just game hurting. It's not like it limits what a player sells and what he'll just end up throwing away because he can't sell, it only increases the furstation of having to sell the items due to the sheer time factor involved. It ends up being a waste of time, not even a time sink but pure waste of time trying to sell everything and that leads to frustation that isn't even coming from the game being hard but rather from a silly mechanic... I also merits that as I said, you cannot make trades fairer to minimise your loss buy using less valueable items to try to round values up as even as possible because the currency was made in a weird way.

323

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

« on: January 30, 2014, 07:29:50 pm »

Well taken into account that at best you could start with 20 initiative and that would mean severely hamper your other stats and what is rolled has a chance of going up to 15... that is a major. I think rolls should be no higher than between 1 aand 3. It shouldn't be luck dependent on something that is this imporntant. As for having a stealthy character... nope. 5agi, 5dex. I just use the stealth to approuch the enemies to the range and place I feel right and then make sure I also have the first turn. You don't need a super stealthy build.

As for Psi being mostly support, you couldn't be more wrong. It can deal moderate to high damage although it's not really competing with sniper rifles or really good greandes the damage is pretty good, now iclude stuns, abillity to block stuff, paralises, fears.

One of my favorite things to do was to make a copy of each enemy human in range to get them attacking the original form (bilocation used with the feat that makes psy spells AoE) and then use the spell that creates a wall off thus blocking the enemy from attacking me in any way... Hilarious because the duplicates can only be hurt by psi attacks XD... Psi is very real for a primary weapon and it addapts to almost all situations because of it's utillity value even if damage wise it's not the highest when you compare it to a 7 burst assault rifle or a sniper shot or even a mk5 grenade.

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Development Log / Re: Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

« on: January 30, 2014, 05:10:02 pm »

Ok I've decided to give this game a very short go, I wanted to take a look at the new economy system in action. I already knew from the patch notes that I wouldn't like it, as I've expressed my opinion here before but I decided, let's just do the first quest and see into how many problems I'll run into. This is what I found.

I've cleared the first area and the one to the left where there is the generator. killed every rathound, looted everything and went back (yes I didn't even finished the quest) cause I needed healing. Now when I got back I managed to sell a couple guns, my starting one and the one I found. I sold a few bullets and some leather. then I was left with a ton of stuff I just couldn't sell because no one even bought them to begging with. I'm talking about things like hearts and scraps and other misclaneous components. This is stuff that is actually worth a lot of money but where are the buyers? Not only there is none, but judging from the quantities of stuff merchants buy I'd sell probably 3 pieces and then wait 90 minutes for them to reset to be able to sell more. This is just plain wrong and bear in mind, I have barelly played but already I am unable to sell stuff that I have no use for and that is worth quite a bit of money... I haven't managed to run into weight problems and I was sure I wasn't going to early game, that is why I thought of only atempting the first quest but if 10 minutes into the game I am already having these problems with selling stuff, I can't imagine how horrible it will become later on.

Another that I hadn't thought before but became so clearly evident after I tried to buy or sell anything. I'm am always going to have much worse trades than before. When merchants bought everything I could min max the less valuable stuff I had to make the trade as fair as possible because the merchant does not loses even one 1 credit so now you have to always pay more than the stuff is worth or sell for less than the stuff is worth.

Lastly this is not directly related to the new economy systembut I'd like to add it none the less... Sure a pure Psi build is possible from the beggining, but it's at a major disadvantage. Everyone  buys a few bullets, finds a few more and still has money to buy everything else but a psiker will have to buy Psi boosters by the ton throughout the whole game. Now later on this will not be as much of a problem but initially they will only be able to afford them and nothing else because psi boosters give enough Psi to kill 3 creatures in average (around 45 psi per kill if everything goes perfectly and the bosster only gives 170, but it's highly likelly that here and there you need a third attack to make the kill which means more psi spent ). Now Psi boosters do are cheaper, but 700 per psi booster = 700 cost to kill 3 enemies, that's far from effective and while yes, you can use other weapons and use Psi whenever necessary only, it's very innefective considering your skills will make Psi deal a lot of damage, everything else is subpar damage wise which means that not only it takes a lot longer to kill the enemies, but it also means you take more damage and are spending on healing instead.

I haven't tested the innitiative system because from the notes I found it to be unrelliable. What people need is to have a way to make sure they always act first. Stealth inherently does that even if with slight penalties to movement now it is still the best way to start of an engagement because you have the first turn and you can setup the battle accordingly to whatever you scout first... I'd sugest making the innitiative system less unrelliable, much less RNG related. It is important to know when you're going to have the first turn and when you aren't.

325

Suggestions / Re: Ideas for new weapons, armors, items, feats, and psionics

« on: January 30, 2014, 12:58:07 pm »

WolveNZ - While I see what you mean with spears do think about it for a second. All that is required to make a spear is a long stick, can even be from a broomstick or something and something in the front that will stab, a simple piece of metal from somewhere, maybe even a shard of glass. It's and incredibly cheap and easy to make weapon in a place were resources are scarse. A spear against a knife is at an obvious advantage and not only that but against many creature like rathounds it's better than a knife cause it keeps the opponent at bay (at least from a reasonable standpoint, obviously game mechanics say otherwise but realisticly that's how it would be seen)... Add this to the fact that you live in caves and metro system which means narrow passages. A spear can easly keep any mellee opponent at bay because it is very hard to bypass it... If anything it has even more place than sword or axes from my bview point but I do belive all of them have reasons to exist.

326

General / Re: An honest question about the RNG

« on: January 30, 2014, 12:45:05 am »

I cannot tell you whether or not the RNG displays the proper to hit chances or if it's working as intended. I belive I can tell you that it does not include any dodge chances and this is why. First you need to roll to hit the target and manage a success before the target is actually allowed to make a dodge roll to try to avoid the shot... Ok it might not work like this but I'm almost absolutly sure that it would work as such cause it's the most logical way. Dodge chances are obviously not displayed but I'd assume that if you attack an enemy and he dodges, you'd get a indication of a dodge rather than just a miss. Same thing as when you dodge an enemy attack... So when you see a dodge it wasn't that your attack missed, it actually would hit, but the enemy avoided the hit by dodging.

327

Suggestions / Re: Ideas for new weapons, armors, items, feats, and psionics

« on: January 30, 2014, 12:39:44 am »

The flashlight would probably need to be changed to, increases chances to spot stealth cause stealth isn't based just in making use of the darkness but also possible terrain features and other things. Also flashlight would have to make it impossible for you to get in stealth. Still a good idea.

Energy and health mk2... Quite frankly, I've seen this in fallout 2 and some other games and to me, it makes no sense. Why does a better regeneration has to come with a drawback? As you go up in levels you need something better because what you previously used isn't healing nearly enough, this is supposed to be something that simply follows character development, no need for a negative side effect attached to it. More likelly they will be more expensive and require more materials or rarer materials to craft which will make up for the extra bonus it provides.

Repel I'm not sure how it would be balanced because things will have to be rebalanced once energy shields are released and this basicly is another for of a shield. I like the idea but it would probably have to wait for energy shields to be out and then if implemented some rebalancing would be required again... Besides with it not being a scaling abillity one would have to account that being so good every character would go into that even on 3 will just to get that specific spell and then move on the points somewhere else. Still ther eis potential to be explored I'm sure.

Repulsion is kinda nice but I'd make it just single target, little energy cost and little AP cost as well since it wouldn't be such a great spell anyway although it could have a minor amount of utillity. The basic idea to make it single target instead of AoE is that not only you might under some circunstances prefer to have it target only one specific target, but you already have a feat to make that tree of Psi AoE anyway, so if you need it to go AoE, the feat is there to provide the versatibillity.

328

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

« on: January 30, 2014, 12:27:39 am »

It doesn't means a DLC has to actually be small. Just because some companies make tiny DLCs and squeeze a lot of money for it, it doesn't means that other developers have to follow suit in a bad direction. There have been games in the past ho received major DLC updates that added so much that it was awesome. I know that the DLC's for the pit were for the most part big, only one of them was small cause it mainly had 3 new classes and a few extra stuff to craft. FTL is receiving a major free DLC this year too. I am sure Styg knows what he does there. If he makes a DLC it will be certainly well worth it, if not then there will be an underrail 2 for sure.

329

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

« on: January 29, 2014, 06:25:34 pm »

yeah I know what you mean, it would be nice if the speed run of this game was 100.000 hours long, but alas such is not possible. Still when this one is fully released I'm sure there will be room for either DLC which allows many more hours of gameplay though it will of course require time or simply an underrail 2.

330

Suggestions / Re: Ideas for new weapons, armors, items, feats, and psionics

« on: January 29, 2014, 04:33:17 am »

Shotguns wouldn't be hard to implement, you just have them lose damage over distance and give it a penalty against armor to offset a high base damage.

Rocket launchers I dunno. Let's take into account this is an underground setting and big explosions especially when uncontroled could easly cause cave ins so I'd say no to that but a grenade launcher would work. Quite frankly though, I have never seen the need to throw a grenade that far and far shots due to the usual darkness penalties and so on are extremelly difficult to land. Still I don't see a reason not to have one.

More types of mellee weaponry would be nice albeit mostly flavor if not for the introduction of feats based off it. I can see how in a modern world they would be off place but taken into account that this is a pos appocaliptic setting and people scavenge what tehy can, it's not hard to imagine people making tools of war that belong in the past simply for the simpleness of aquiring the materials and how much those weapons would last when compared to a gun which needs bullets. This being especially true for bandids.

The armor ideas are ok but unnecessary. Basicly resistence to certain elements already exists in the manufacture of armors so making element specific is unnecessary, if anythign it would mean you needed a walking armory behind you so you could switch to the right armor type previous to the battle which could be a pain in the ass given the weight system that was implemented.

As for the feats.

Auto-kill is never a good thing, it breaks up balance no matter how it is implemented.

I'm not sure vampire would be adequate given the somewhat realism the game is supposed to have.

Block probably needs to be readdressed but the core idea is fundamentally good, it's just that the bonus is too high.

Skill bonus feats are ok, but I feel they are ultimatly not really worth that much. Of course I speak for myself but I'd never take a bonus to a skill over something like say aimed shot or any other real tangible combat advantages.

As for the psionic abillities. I kinda like them but the boiling blood doesn't seams that good. From what i've learned on this game you don't really care that much about dots, you want to kill everything and quickly least you take fatal damage in the proccess although maybe you could make something like a combo abillity. Maybe something that woud not only do a decent amount of damage as fire, but would also leave the character pretty weakned against cold damage so that you could chain into a cold attack next for even more damage than the cold attack would normally deal. It would also combine well the with feat that has you alternating between fire and ice spells.

Overall good sugestions here, could use some tweeks here and there but good ideas indeed.