A bit of Player Data and Pure Opinion

[twitch]

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!).

[Styg]

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!).

The early game used to be even more difficult - it had more enemies (rathounds) in the starter areas and they were a bit tougher and you also started with far less money. Since then I've been steadily making it easier on both fronts. It's still a bit off according to feedback I've been getting. Even though I personally don't have much trouble when I'm playing through it, I can understand how someone new to the game might. I'll probably add some more loot (meds, ammo, repair kits) to the early areas to make it a bit easier and to help people avoid having to retreat back to the base before finishing the first mission.

Pure PSI is not meant to be viable early game. You should still use your weapons relatively effectively at close range even if you decide not to spend any skill points on them. You need to be versatile early game, specialization comes later. Shroomhead will probably get changed in the next update to make it less tedious.

I'm currently considering restoring all the health to enemies upon leaving an area. I know it won't solve all the problems with this tactic, but it should limit it's effectiveness a bit. That said, the problem with the encounter you described (and other similar ones) is that it can deal a lot of ranged damage up front at the beginning of the combat from which it's very hard to recover. Hopefully when energy shields are implemented they will help greatly with this.

[Elhazzared]

I'm not sure that would be so great Styg. Now most cases it won't really afect a lot of stuff but for example the burrowers in GMS. the only way to win at the level you complete the GMS is to go in and go out. There is a problem in the viabillity of doing that place early on and I see the impossibillity of doing a place the moment you go there for missions as being a problem. It's never a good thing to have to backtrack just to do something you were underleveled to do only to then go back to the main path you were on. Another problem there is what the place has to offer. Supposedly there was something valuable enough for the guys to be trying to get in there. But instead of having another lower or higher level of the GMS compound, instead there is a cave which is certainly not what should have been there (not accordingly to what is given to understand sine you're searching a military facillity for something valuable that would probably be down there but suddenly it's not a military facillity but a cave infested with burrowers) and it is nearly devoid of any loot at all, save from a dead guy at the end. My idea here would be to make the cave still difficult but more manageble for the character level. Also add somewhere another entrance which will lead into a another part of the GMS compound (a new part) where there is some valuable material which was what was being looked for in the first place... It is just an incredible furstation to do that and get nothing in return, even worse for non psiker who spend a lot of resources to clear it out.

As for a change to make shroomhead less tedious. That is great news!

If you want a simple change to make early game a lot better just give a better starting armor. If there is a 20/4 to start with then you can take a decent punishment from the rathounds with that amount of damage reduction. Mind you, it doesn't allows people to do it like idiots but the damage reduction is enough at that point to be able to take a couple hits here and there.

[Elhazzared]

Indeed that part of the complex is a major peeve of mine.

Stealth doesn't really works, there are so many burrowers and the small ones that you cannot stealth all the way there and back, you'll just get seen after a while. Similarly, fighting with stealth helps nothing other than iniciating the combat. Every single time I tried to agro small parts it never happened, what happened is that all but 2 burrowers NE and a few smaller ones up north are left. Everything else just seams aware of my presence the moment I aggro and this is like, barelly a few yards from the entry... Indeed the dificulty in that place is insane for characters who just finished GMS and the rewards for doing that are virtually non-existent.

[twitch]

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.

[Styg]

@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.

I'm aware of this and I'm not trying to balance the game just according to my own experience. Particularly in case of the early game encounters which I will be toning down slowly to ease up the difficulty curve util we hit the sweet spot.

@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.

I've thought about this, but I don't know if it's really necessary. You get a pistol and potentially a crossbow at the start that you can use without much skill to get you through the early game. I kinda feel this is enough. We'll see, it's not set in stone, it might change.

@Elhazzared
I might add more to the burrowers lair later when I start connecting the Lower Underrail caves. We'll see.

[Elhazzared]

Epili... Level 8 in GMS? What? Never in my life. let's see, first quests gets me to level 3 or 4, the one to catch hopers doesn't really helps much either. even bringing the meat to the fisher guy. Doing the package delivery. I should fisnish the GMS coumpond at best on level 6. Also I never up agillity or dexterity so bonus doesn't really exists for me there. So yeah, my stealth cannot get me pasts those guys cause starting to get close the suspicion level starts to get higher quickly if you get somewhat close and the place is infested with soe many that there is no way for me to stealth all the way through. I don't really make a very high based stealth character cause stealth for me is no a way to bypass problems. If i have to stealth rather than kill then in my own warped view, I'm doing it wrong. Loot and XP must be gathered at all costs XD.

And yes, you get warned that you're about to enter a paces where shit already hit the fan, but you were also told earlier that there was valuable stuff there and that's what's missing for me. That place should supposedly be still part of GMS and not just a burrower cave from the information we get. Now I can obviously accept that the recent earthquake might have colapsed the passage and that it now leads to a burrower hive but there should be still a passage through the hive to the GMS last floor where the said valuable stuff is... Still Styg seams to be willing to add more to the place in the fure and that makes me happy enough though I still feel the overall difficulty of the place should be slightly toned down so that combat can be more managable by only having to fight small groups at a time rather than having to deal with the whole cave marching upon me.

[twitch]

@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.

[Elhazzared]

Those bandits are easy to deal with if you learn how to do it. A grenade whould at least take half their life away or straight up kill them if it's at least a mark 2. but let's assume a mark 1. Behind those guys there are rathounds and they will eventually venture far to close to aggro on the bandits. wait by the barel on the right of the screen and once the rathounds engage them wait to make sure all bandits are attacking the rathounds as you creep closer (no stealth needed). Then you toss the grenade at them (try to land it where you hit all the bandits but none of the rathounds so they are distracted for longer. Do this right and half their life is chipped away not to mention they, at least 1 will be distracted by the rathounts so you get a bit more leeway until the are dead. Next comes an aimed and most likelly will dispatch one of the bandits. From here on out it should be doable.

[twitch]

@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.

[Elhazzared]

As far as I know there is no way to peacefully resolve the matter but quite frankly. XP and Loot! There is also a way to stealth by them which works kinda teh way I sujested to you. instead of throwing a grenade, wait for them to engage the ratsand tehn you should be able to stealth by them and take the first stairs on the left... Of course this only answers the how to get in problem though I suppose you could say by the time you get out you are already higher level so the encounter dificulty would have been lower.

I'm glad my advice worked for you, quite frankly it was the only way I've actually found to deal with them, I've failed horribly even with psi... Granted with psi+a grenade was the best effect ever! Grenades are not just cheap, if you can craft them then even a mk1 becomes like a third of the price XD. More however, making mk3 is also easy and even mk. You need at best 10 mechanic and 44 chemical and mk5 are devastating weapons, they nearly kill mutants. mk3 may or may not kill mutated dogs/humans but what survives, survives on very low HP. So yeah, grenades are like the most cost efficient item in the game, but while they are very cost efficient, if you don't craft them you don't get powerful ones that you'll need for the junkyard and of course. Just like ammo for your guns, it's a good policy to conserve them.

[twitch]

@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.

[Elhazzared]

Strange. I will admit that I never tried but so long as they wouldn't get a red eye meaning that you were noticed then you should be able to pass by. I also would advise to actually go into turn mode when close enough or when the dogs are nearly dead, so you get more time or well... more movement.

[twitch]

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.

[Elhazzared]

Ah so it works as I though it would... Good!