BF game design feedback

[saltin]

My assessment of the alpha BF: it's an ok game with no major flaws (except for the iron ball) that I could see, just needs a few cosmetics and polish which I am sure will happen.
I might buy the retail version eventually but at this point I must say there is no way this game will go mainstream and/or be a hit.
There are just too many of the wrong type of limitations and out right anti-fun elements built into it.

It comes down to a game design philosophy disagreement, one can make a game very difficult indeed near impossible without limiting and bludgeoning the players, and that is the only style that is mainstream.Thousands of free to play games do this,and many get 1/2 a million downloads on very difficult games because the difficulties are in the right areas.

So the specifics then:

1/Limits on buffing..Seriously? no one does that, all this does is make players feel like the babysitter is only allowing us one piece of pie after dinner.
This is hyper-control over players actions.What if I want to buff 100 times and take my time exploring every single opening in the level..and then do it again just for fun? There is no room for players like me in tb games then? I should just go play something else?

2/Limit on Engineer sentry/Templar heals ect..Character abilities and skills can be more fun than the games themselves.There are many such examples in both the MMO's and single player games. Limiting the use of sentries or any of the other characters abilities is like stabbing BF in the heart because there was a chance someone might actually have a good time.

Your focus on balance is killing the game.Gratz on having a balanced unfun game,hope the expectations are set accordingly,10k dls max @google store.

3/Tactical point cost of item.This one is a gem,this is like having xmas tree where all the kids can see the shiny toys but none can touch or open any of the presents, not now..not ever.Again seriously?
Are we like petrified someone might spawn something fun and enjoy it? or something terrible like use the items to win the level? Might as well take that feature out of the game,it serves no purpose as is,other than the annoying tease.

4/Engineer heat,not sure what to think here,in one of my games the toon practically did nothing other than a couple actions and now overheated.He cant even buff.ok I get it,another unfun feature.

If you ever wondered why some players "rate rage" at google/itune store, well features like these 4 are prime candidates to explain it.

As a recap: Many players want/crave/need difficult games but the limitations have to be in the right areas.Ie Spawn more mobs,add roaming boss,build inferno towers,orbit a xenos black death star..blah blah blah, do whatever..but leave the characters alone and let us use our toys anywhere,anytime anyhow and play the game the way WE (the players) want to play.

Btw that pic with iron ball is how I feel when play BF,like I could enjoy the game so much more if I didnt have to drag that dead weight around my ankle.

I know it's too late for any major changes to BF but I feel this needed to be said,maybe the feedback can be of some use in your future games.

Peace.

[ntsheep]

In my opinion, it's never to late to make changes in an Alpha, that's what an Alpha is for.

[En1gma]

I feel like literally all of that could have been said without sounding so amazingly pissed off... We signed up to help test and give -constructive- (emphasis on the constructive) feedback. If there is something you want changed, there has to be a better way to get it across...

[slayernz]

saltin these are really interesting points and certainly should trigger some good discussion. It's also a great thing that you're part of the Alpha because your candid feedback is what the TB's are after. If you kept quiet and simply spouted hollow complimentary stuff then the TB's would be missing critical insights and balance issues. Also, it's not too late for changes - again, we're in the Alpha and the game isn't fully baked. If what you have identified percolates up to the top of people's consciousness, it may be enough for the TB's to stop and re-look at the mechanics around that particular aspect. Even after the TB's release a game, they spend countless hours adjusting/re-balancing, and altering game play. If you ever played ST in the early release stage, you'd find it a completely different game to what it is now.

Regarding your four points, I found the first and second points were really similar. Limits on buffs and deployments.

1 I tend to agree with you on the buff limitations to a certain point. In TA, only the captain had a special ability, and those abilities needed to be limited in quantity because they did become very unbalanced. For example, providing a boost to ammo, or increasing movement (when movement was an absolute critical limit) had to be limited to a certain number of uses.

However, with BF, you get a cost associated with the use of the Buff. The cost is in heat. I think that removing the limit to the buff could be a valid option if you increase the heat cost. That way you aren't going to constantly buff your squad at every opportunity, because doing so will cause some of your squad to smoke.In HoS, you don't get a limit on buffs - but you do expend SP. You have the ability to top SP up with potions, and in BF, you cool down as a matter of course, so that's almost the same thing.

Solution - remove buff limit, but increase buff heat?

2. Having limits to deployments of equipment is actually more common in games than not. In Diablo 3, for example, your Demon Hunter can't drop more than 3 sentries at any one time. If he/she drops another one, the first one disappears. Further, the sentries disappear within a set timeframe.

If you have unlimited numbers of, say sentry guns, then you're going to overpower the battlefield with sentries and have no need for soldiers.

In Aliens, they had 4 sentries. That's it. Limited ammo too. It's bulky and a pain to have to carry around with you.

3. TP cost of item - that's an interesting one. So far, I haven't purchased a single TP upgrade or ordinance because I would far prefer investing in a new unit than spending that extra valuable SP on an upgrade or extra ordinance (that may or may not be needed). Also, when you add into the equation a turn limit target, certain upgrades will never ever pay for themselves. It's fine if the campaign level lasted 40 - 50 turns, but turn targets of less than 20 mean you're never going to buy the upgrades. The TB's certainly know this though - and have adjustments to costs on the cards. I would like to see the costs have a return between the 5 and 10 turn marks. If you are increasing your SP by 20 points per turn, then the cost should be between 100 SP and 200 SP.

4. It's not just the engineer - I think that the heat balance does need to be adjusted a little more. Your squad does tend to overheat a lot, and it seems to take some units ages to cool down, while others go cool very quickly. Should there be a net heat gain on movement? I would probably argue that it probably shouldn't heat you up as much as it seems to do. If your armor heats you up so much when you're just walking, it's a design flaw rather than good mechanics. It means that if your job was to get from one side of the map to the other in a hurry, you'd burn out a few soldiers on the way.

[johndramey]

Well, as others have said, thanks for your honest feedback saltin. I and others can definitely appreciate your time and effort writing it all out and having opinions on balance are what alphas are all about.

That said, I'm going to have to disagree with a lot of what you said. I'll try to organize it well and hope you don't take anything personally.

1) Buff limiting. I'm ot 100% what you mean by this but I read it as a "we should be able to stack buffs." If you mean having 2 (or more) different, active buffs at the same time, I totally agree. I will say that I've stacked a couple buffs on my Templars and, as far as I know, that ability is in the game. If, on the other hand, you mean we should be able to stack the same buff multiple times, I'm going to have to disagree. As far as I know, no games allow you to buff a character with the same ability over and over again. You can not cast bless 3 times in D&D to get a net +3. It would be totally unbalanced and encourage players to just invest 1 point in an ability and cast it multiple times rather than build for that ability.


2) Limiting skills is, again, a balance thing. If we could use Sentry Turrets or Grenades an unlimited number of times then those skills would become must-haves that every Engineer/soldier/Berserk would require. Why spend RP and levels boosting burst when you could just as easily throw 5 grenades for more damage, bigger AoE, and less heat generation?

3) tact point ordnance cost. I'll actually agree that, on the whole, they are too high and will most likely never see use by 99% of players if they are playing efficiently.

4) Engineers do seem to run too hot, and it might be something to look at, but it hasn't ever been a huge issue for me and my squad. However, heat management is an aspect of the game and I actually enjoy it. I'll go with what slayernz said, it could be a good idea to take a look at the cost of some actions and try to make it less easy for engineers to cook.

I don't want you to feel like I've just disregarded all you said, that's not the case. We all share our opinions and the TBs take them and make a final judgement call.

[contributor]

Yeah, this is a good discussion over all. saltin you brought up some stuff that probably needs to be addressed. The tone isn't necessary though. I guess I haven't asked them, but I'm pretty sure the TBs didn't sit down and ask "how can make a game that is no fun to play and will really piss people off." The point of the Alpha is to work on these things and your feedback is crucial to this and can probably be incorporated to an extent. I think the TBs probably built a game that is fun for them and it is also already proving fun to a lot of their core players. With that said they probably do want to break into a bigger market and have something that is more popularly successful beyond their usual masochistic base.

A few thoughts.

The buff limit thing is something I kind of get. For me the issue here though is more about an enforced style of play. There is a big emphasis in this game on completing a level quickly and getting out. This is enforced by the turn count, the spawn rate and the fixed number of buffs available. To be honest when I play fast I don't notice the fixed buff number, because I can stay almost constantly buffed and still have a few left over at the end of the level. Maybe it is good to move at least some buffs over to unlimited usage. I think making turrets and grenades unlimited though would be game breaking. It wouldn't take long before the game becomes about setting up your turret walls as fast as possible. It's also highly unrealistic unless the turrets are made out of folded paper and weigh next to nothing. Back to the enforced fast play though. Maybe it would be a good idea to mix things up a bit in terms of level creation. There could be some levels that are all about take, hold and dominate the terrain. These would give you enough SP to eventually begin replenishing buffs and the like, when the ordnance costs get adjusted. That's already coming so it doesn't need any more discussion until it's changed.

On the heat issue, I personally haven't seen it as such a big deal. My most recent plays have been on brutal and I most often make the turn limits and yes I finish most every level with somebody grossly overheated. I've pushed the pink bar all the way up to the top before to get it done. Maybe people need to know that damage from heat is not that bad and that there are times when heat is inevitable. One big thought I had here though was whether heat rates can be scaled into the difficulty equation. That way people who don't ever want to overheat their templars can be happy playing on easy-hard and the masochists can play above hard. Heck, maybe even special abilities, like numbers of grenades and buffs, could be scaled based on difficulty.

[Brutus Aurelius]

First and foremost, I agree that the attitude in the first post was not needed at all. Cory, Andrew and Martin all try their best to bring us the best games that three guys on a budget can bring us. Are they the bestsellers or Games of the Year? No, of course not. They don't have a few million dollars and 80 people to work on these games.

As for the game being unplayable or not fun, that's not true in the slightest. I've advanced from Normal to Hard to Brutal in just a couple weeks of testing, with all of the handicaps that we get as Alpha testers. I can see how the games might leave a sour taste at first, but it's like making a brand new dessert from scratch. No matter how experienced the chef, the first iterations are gonna be worse than they could be.

Many of the things mentioned, such as Ordnance/Upgrade costs, are already on the list for improvement. Some things, such as Buffs being limited, are part of the design and force you to make more tactical decisions. Do some feel like they could last longer? Of course. It's strange to got from unlimited Buffs in HoS to limited Buffs in BF.

To finish off this post, I'm going to liken this Alpha to being a Templar Scout force. Do we know what's on the other side of this warzone/Temple/ruin? No. But we have faith that we will succeed, be it with Fleet Support, Shalun's wisdom, or by fire and steel!

[Cory Trese]

Great thread. Thanks for posting so much valuable input.

I love you all.

[ntsheep]

Your not getting my Bud Light Cory Trese

[fallen]

saltin - thanks for the great feedback - the alpha is all about getting ideas, criticism and suggestions of all kinds.

In response to 1, 2 and 4: there are a lot of factors in the game that push toward the tactical style of the Templar Knights. That is, get on the ground, inflict maximum damage, complete objectives, get off the ground. They fight in small squads (a battleforce is 16 Knights) and have superior fire-power but, a big part of their military success is hooked on their extreme training (passed down from their lineages) and their ability to act quickly and avoid being bogged down. Max Buff counts, Sentry Turret limits, Heat rules, lack of easily available Healing, enemy spawn rules, bonus XP and RP for completing levels quickly ... these all lead toward the style of warfare that the Templar Knights employ. I hope that helps explain some of the underlying game ideas, even if you do find them to be frustrating. As an example, we've looked extensively at the MCBT (Max Continuous Buff Time) in levels to ensure that you can generally beat levels 100% buffed if you are playing in this lighter, strike-force style.

If you aren't overly frustrated as to not want to play at all anymore, perhaps you'd try again and play with lighter, speedier tactics. I can see that we could work harder to push this information into the tutorial.

In response to 3, we agree and are working on it. This is an alpha, so we didn't promise to roll out a finished or perfect game. But we did promise to listen and improve! So, here we go

Thanks all!

[contributor]

I'm going to go out on a limb here just to keep this discussion going because I think it is a good one and an important one. It seems like saltin is saying this game is not that much fun because it enforces a certain style of play and if that style of play doesn't happen to push your buttons, then you're of out of luck. The thing is, that for a lot of us around here, this game pushes the right buttons for us so we're all having a good time and think this could be the biggest TB hit yet. But those outside voices are really important if this game is really going to bust out of the usual TB base. To the extent that we all reply saying "no this game really is fun, if you play it like you're supposed to" is sort of missing the point. When a game is overloaded with "this is how your supposed to play it" it is sort of like the person who enforces only the rules for cards from the book, when everybody really wants to add in their favorite house rules. The more flexible the game can be in terms of the rules the more it is going to appeal to a larger base. Turn based rewards are great, but if we are forced to play fast and dirty every level due to other factors then that won't appeal to a lot of people, and all the purists can say "well they just don't get it," but then all we've got is a group of elitist gamers playing a niche game.

This is somewhat akin to the unending debate about whether you hold to your vision and make an amazing game that will have a core cult following or whether you give in to the demands of the masses, risk unbalancing it, sell much higher volume, but possibly disappoint the base and even yourselves. Hopefully it's not always a one or the other choice. Ideally there is a way to do both. It would be great to see some more creative solutions come out of this discussion because I would love to see this game both maintain that high TB standard of demanding strategy games and also appeal to a much wider audience.

The only idea that occurs to me now is to make large changes to the difficulty levels. I know I mentioned this in my above post but integrating heat and even numbers of buffs and special abilities into the difficulty scale could possibly help to accomplish both. Easy and normal could be a romp. Demanding and Hard would be really demanding and hard, in fact maybe they could even find other ways to be hard to make up for more generous supplies of special abilities. Keep Brutal and Nightmare the way they are now, because relatively not that many people are going to go up there and if they do they're asking for it. Anyways that's just one stab at a solution. I'm not sure if it's a good one.

Anyways, good rules, make good games, but rules that appear artificial will also alienate a big segment of gamers.

[Cory Trese]

Thanks for the feedback!

[anvil]

Personally I find this to be a great squad level game. The tactics are as varied as the combinations and character development make it. Virtually unlimited.

It has a few problems. His point 3 is right on. As it stands, and as far as I have advanced in the game, are just eye candy,, temptations and teases to never be reached in 18+/- game turns.

Heat is very interesting and an important part of the game, but needs tweaking.

It may be my style of play, or "early game conditioning", but holding TP is no way to play the game. Take it, leave it, move on quickly. This is basically a Viet Nam tactic. It was frustrating then, and is frustrating now.

[Cory Trese]

Bummer anvil that you're not seeing the TP as valuable. We tried really, really hard on the Alpha levels.

Maybe the campaign levels will give a better impression. Hopefully

[anvil]

Perhaps what's needed is for you to create a reason tohold them.

The artifacts map is a good example, and a grand game it is!

First move: The engineer moves to the TP and activates it. The captain heads twards the northeast artifact. I usually have two soldiers. One gards to the east whilst the other heads to the west chokepoint west of the TP.
2od: captain continues with no resistance to the northeast artifact.the engineer continues to the west chokepoint and the soldier heads to the west artifact with little interference.
3rd: engineer builds first turret. Captain reaches his artifact and heads south. Create first new veteran. Who I choose depends on how I want to play the game. Each creates a whole new type of game! Awesome game design! The soldier reaches his west artifact and heads back twards the engineer.
4: the new guy and captain head for the north east artifact. I either create a scout or wait one turn and create a Neptune.
5: major battle with "all hands on deck" withdrawing to the extraction point. 4 fighting to hold the ground and chokepoint around the TP whilst the captain and mate do an incredible fighting withdrawal. no details, just whatever my squad composition from this point on, its a real cliff hanger! More times than not I do not lose anybody, but their fait hangs by a thin thread!

The point of this is, I have no reason to hold the TP other than its there. It's purpose is being impassable dead ground and create chokepoint. With game turns designed as they are, it offers me no benefits after filling out my squad(#3 in the OP) other than that.

I'm playing 6 squads, 3 normal and 3 hard. All are ready for fall of team stratos. All maps have been played many times looking for bugs and figuring out tactics. The only perk coming from the TP is the one for $500 to increase its strength, and the reason its used is as a skitter soakoff to keep them away from the primary mission. I've tried the one to boost its offense? The one that adds machine guns? I see no effect. A number of the others I have no clue what they do. I'm sure the documentation will be upgraded.

To be sure, this in only one way detracts from the game,,, it offers me something that I can't get in my normal play of the game.

Critter count too is secondary. As best I can see, the primary goal has to be to finish under the turn limit in order to get those awesome troop upgrades,,, without which, you are critterbait.

Heat is only frustrating because this is an alpha and changes with each new release, as it should. It is one of your well thought out mechanisms for challenging gameplay, and only need be learned as to how to deal with it. Balancing this is why we are here.

My heat suggestion for the final release is to make have minimal effect in easy/normal, and increase its intensity as we progress to higher levels of play.