P2 Daily Question: what is the best/weakest aspect?

[fallen]

What do you think the strongest aspect of BF is?

What do you think the weakest area of the game is?

[Brutus Aurelius]

Strongest aspect, hmm. Good question.

I would say, how smooth the turns play is definitely one.

[fallen]

I would say we are not fishing for complements per say - we are looking for areas we can (1) strengthen or (2) should focus on more because they are already awesome

Thank you for your feedback. You are all having such a big hand in making this the best Trese Brothers game ever

[jknut]

Things I like:

• Developer responsiveness to suggestions
• Turn based goals
• Constant leveling and ability to improve squad members
• Ability to be aggressive with things like splitting into sub-squads or loner/stealth to get to the switch.  I would encourage more opportunities like this in the full game.

Things I don't like:

• Getting hit hard by dumb luck... like spawns right next to you, or multiple counter attacks.  It looks like these are being addressed
• Fog not clearing correctly
• Having to play through a level to figure out the maze, then replaying it and still not figuring it out (eg. Stratos Vault)
• Using melee (maybe it will get better at some point?)

Things I hope for:

• Anytime respec
• Be able to permanently dismiss Templars from roster in HQ
• New recruits come in at team average
• Encouraging melee use in the beginning of the game.  In my experience, using melee = certain death.

[fallen]

jknut - interesting feedback! Thanks for sharing.

Seems like we are addressing most of your concerns I don't understand the melee one, but everyone has different experiences.

[jknut]

I'm building most of my squad for ranged combat so I can move through levels quickly.  I agree with @kanly on melee use.  I should try experimenting some more with melee, but I'm normally running the following unless the squad is split up based on objectives:

Xenos chasing me ->

PR soldier (rear coverage)
Stealth scout
Engineer (or two if multiple TPs to get at same time)
Sniper scout
Captain
LL soldier (front coverage)

->

Goal

[slayernz]

For me ...
Things I like ..
* My Goodness I absolutely love the layers of complexity in the game. For me it continues to differentiate TB games from the run of the mill games out there. You certainly can get straight into the game, but there are so many ways to optimize and improve. It's a fascinating example of clever mathematics

* The Tech tree keeps making me drool and wish for a gazillion RP. There is oodles of specialization and options. It's almost a shame though that if you unlock a research section that includes talents, you don't automatically get the level 1 of that talent automatically. If you have unlocked 2 or 3 different options in one round, you don't get to see the benefit for many battles after that. Oh wait - that should be in the section below

* The graphics, the design, the story. All are a step up and just show how amazingly far you've come from ST and TA and CK. Brilliant!


Things that need improvement ..
* Spawn locations. In Tutorial level 4, I had captured the first TP. Had my squad in defensive positions waiting for the next turn to spawn a soldier.
When I hit the turn button, a Xeno spawned right beside the TP and attacked straight away. This meant my TP suffered damage straight away with me not able to do anything.
THEN the next turn, TWO xenos spawned right beside the TP and got their 1x attack in. Very annoying.
Improvement - when a TP is taken over, all spawn points within 3 square radius of the spawn point get removed.

* Gear Up indicators in the Veterans section of the HQ. If you don't change your Captain's gear (eg when you don't want to switch from gun to shield), the Gear Up icon doesn't go away.
Improvement - when you go into a character gear screen and view individual sections of gear, then the marker should disappear regardless of whether you selected anything or not

* The back button on the Android device. When you're looking at your talents and trying to decide where you're going to allocate your rare and valuable talent point, pressing the "back" takes you back to the character profile again, rather than taking you back to the Talent section.
Improvement - in the talent section, the back button should work like the "cancel" button. People don't mind going specific talent --> Talent section --> Profile section by having to press the back button 3 times. It's more intuitive that way.

* Selecting squad members for a deployment. Okay, so I'm still in the tutorial - so maybe this is something post-tutorial, but I am used to the ability to choose the perfect squad (in my eyes) for the occasion. I know I have a different playing style from, say ntsheep, or fallen ... so having squad selectability just lets me optimize for my style


Wish list
* TP swap a squad member. with the TP, you are able to call in a reinforcement (veteran or recruit). It would be cool if you could have the option to swap out an existing squad member with a new one ... calculated at "max (SP cost of new recruit - SP cost of existing recruit, 0) + 50"

[fallen]

slayernz - thanks for the great detail in the responses. Glad to see that the things that need improvement are small or already on our list generally. The last two arent, but thanks for pointing them out.

Any spawning location that close to a TP is a mistake or should have turned off when the TP was captured. Sorry - that seems like a mistake on the authoring side. That level has been replaced completely for the next update.

[slayernz]

Cool - so we have to play the tutorial again at P3 because it's a new level

[En1gma]

Strongest
-Customization and depth of skill trees
-Actual gameplay. Turns are smooth, talents make sense and do what you expect them to do.
-The fact that you can use actual tactics makes this game awesome. The LL hold them at bay, the HL punches right through, and the PR blasts then to shreds. Weapon differentiation keeps the game feeling fresh and intuitive.

Weaknesses:
-Tact Point vulnerability due to proximity spawns (on the list, I know)
-Ordnance costs crazy high for return value.
-I would love to see the Library cover nearly every single aspect possible. Xeno Types, detailed breakdowns of each stat and how it helps/what it does, weapon types, ammo types/effects. (I'm a huge fan of the small details. I understand that many casual players aren't, but the devil is in the details. For me, small details make a huge difference in the way I play- prime example being the breakdown about how criticals work differently from Heroes)

(I'm on my phone, so if I think of more I'll come on when I get my laptop charged)

[Deleted]

The big thing for me has been taking damage especially heavy damage and the lack of healing, I appreciate the design decisions there but maybe we could include more in the tutorial about advancing cautiously and not having opportunity to rest or heal without a paladin. Early in my experience I felt like I was doing something wrong if I got hit big or ended on my last few hit points. I think players should play cautiously but not be put off if they take 80 points of damage in a round.

[contributor]

Best:
Squealing xenos. This gets better when the Hydras get fixed and the bugs die in fire.
Deep tech tree that promises lots of variation in unit development. -I haven't gotten far enough to really try many different builds yet, but this looks very promising.
Deep tactics that are variable not easily mastered.
Turn goals, and hidden caches (this could be fixed/strengthened).

Weakest:
Xenos Goliaths shooting up through the floor next to my engineer and killing him on the spot.
Lack of strong healing abilities is something of a frustration.
Hydras are underpowered/bugged at the moment.
Directions not being super clear, so that you know you're going to have a play a level once to figure it out and again to actually play it right.
Ordnance costs

[bobc]

Strengths:
Managing squad dynamics through gear load-outs, talents and skills.
Customisation - the portraits and armour colours give your squad build a more personal feel.
Top graphics, the different Templar classes are really distinctive.
Top gameplay. Random Xeno spawning (though it can be frustrating) and squad changes means the same level can be different every time.

Weaknesses:
The Xeno hitting so hard. Shouting 'Death before dishonour' sounds great, but surely the Templars would adapt to such a hard hitting enemy, even if its only issuing additional personal med-kits?
TP - ordnance and upgrade costs (talked to death in other threads)

Hope to see:
Different opponents; corrupt FDF (as in TA), pirates, human cultists, rogue templars

[ntsheep]

I'll add more as I think of them, but here are a few,


Strengths:

Equipment screen. Love it.

Amazing choice of items, weapons, and armors. This leads to great customization of Knights.


Weaknesses:

SP doesn't carry over to next level. Kinda feels like you're forced to spend it all.

Still have trouble seeing some enemies when there is too much blood or flames on the tiles.

[slayernz]

SP carried over to the next level would be great.

Heat balance is something that was raised in another thread by saltin and the more I think about it, the more it is something I would like looked at. Everything should have a heat cost, but simply moving 5 squares shouldn't have a net heat increase from one turn to the next. Either you increase the amount of heat dissipation per turn, or provide upgrades/gear that dissipates more heat for later on. Also, some gear should be more efficient than others, so impact on heat generation.

Engineers seem to hold a lot of heat, even though they sometimes are only doing real heat generating things like tact point capture. Just walking from A to B shouldn't make them red hot. I'm thinking base heat dissipation should be higher, but some things like special buffs and other broader attacks should be perhaps a higher heat cost.

<edit>
I've played the infiltration level and found that moving 5 squares without firing isn't so bad for heat generation. The Engineer does run a little hot, but it's not too uncontrollable. If anything, the Soldiers run hotter with overwatch going.

I just realized I could recruit a Neptune specialist from the HQ screen. +15 heat?!? I gotta give him a go to see how quickly he bakes ... but err back on topic, I have to say that the heat management is still something that should be looked at, but it isn't absolutely critical. Scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being "Nah, it's nothing" and 10 being "ZOMG - the world is ending because of this", I'd say it's a solid 5. maybe 5.5 When I've run with the Neptune, it may go up