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Post by slayernz on Oct 26, 2013 17:36:58 GMT -5
fallen That's okay - it'll get us used to the initial slog. I'm guessing that the next phase of gameplay might have slightly bigger beasties, so will you make the starting party an extra level or two higher? Otherwise we might find the enemies harder and harder when in reality, they are right and we are just puny 
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Post by johndramey on Oct 27, 2013 16:41:46 GMT -5
Losing progress is the name of the game, when it comes to Alphas. One question though, will we be able to delete our old parties? Currently we have no way to delete them, so I have 3 separate parties that are through the dungeon on three different difficulty levels. No real rush, my naming scheme keeps it simple, but it drives me crazy knowing I can't clean out old parties. Although, keeping them around seems to be nice for checking the stats on different talents leveled up |
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Post by Cory Trese on Oct 27, 2013 18:15:41 GMT -5
Losing progress is the name of the game, when it comes to Alphas. One question though, will we be able to delete our old parties? Currently we have no way to delete them, so I have 3 separate parties that are through the dungeon on three different difficulty levels. No real rush, my naming scheme keeps it simple, but it drives me crazy knowing I can't clean out old parties. Although, keeping them around seems to be nice for checking the stats on different talents leveled up For Alpha 1, you have to "Clear Application Data" for Android or uninstall for iPhone/iPad. Alpha 2 focuses on completing the primary play experience and probably won't include any updates for New Game / Manage games. We'll turn on the Delete game function for Alpha 3. |
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Post by johndramey on Oct 27, 2013 18:33:54 GMT -5
Roger that, thanks for the clarification.
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Post by johndramey on Oct 29, 2013 2:59:56 GMT -5
I guess I am the only control freak here. :-D I see the light! No, seriously, the light at the end of the tunnel, man! Going through a nightmare play through and.... WOW! Really had to modify my play style. I now find myself using single unit movement everytime I'm not purposely back tracking. Nightmare really is well balanced though. Once I started playing conservatively I had much less trouble. Scouting ahead with my thief while leaving the Outlander and Cleric in choke points really works well. Trigger a fight? Pop an arrow or two and retreat! |
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Post by slayernz on Oct 29, 2013 16:06:53 GMT -5
That's an awesome strategy for scouting. You definitely can't be as gung ho as with easier difficulties. You just have to hope that your Thief isn't surprised and doesn't get wailed on by 4 or 5 nasties at once. In that situation, you sometimes don't make it back to report what you found.
<edit> Question - are you using your cleric as a Melee participant, or in a support role? If she is support, does that mean your Outlander is at the forefront of combat, taking 70% of all blows?
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Post by fallen on Oct 29, 2013 16:23:40 GMT -5
slayernz - that's where Stealth comes in. One of its primary uses in the roll when you encounter monsters -- who gets to go first? If your Stealth wins, you go (the Thief) and can do things like retreat or use special talents that add bonuses in the Surprise round, such as Silent Stalker (out of reach, atm).
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Post by evmaker on Oct 29, 2013 16:39:48 GMT -5
slayernz - that's where Stealth comes in. One of its primary uses in the roll when you encounter monsters -- who gets to go first? If your Stealth wins, you go (the Thief) and can do things like retreat or use special talents that add bonuses in the Surprise round, such as Silent Stalker (out of reach, atm). Is stealth intended to be stealth as in being unseen and being able to scout out enemies and the like without getting into a combat round as well as essentially an initiative check on which side goes first, or just the latter? |
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Post by johndramey on Oct 29, 2013 16:43:23 GMT -5
slayernz - that's where Stealth comes in. One of its primary uses in the roll when you encounter monsters -- who gets to go first? If your Stealth wins, you go (the Thief) and can do things like retreat or use special talents that add bonuses in the Surprise round, such as Silent Stalker (out of reach, atm). Ah, so will stealth actually work for shortening the encounter trigger range? Or is it just something that will give us the upper hand when we trigger an encounter? That's an awesome strategy for scouting. You definitely can't be as gung ho as with easier difficulties. You just have to hope that your Thief isn't surprised and doesn't get wailed on by 4 or 5 nasties at once. In that situation, you sometimes don't make it back to report what you found. <edit> Question - are you using your cleric as a Melee participant, or in a support role? If she is support, does that mean your Outlander is at the forefront of combat, taking 70% of all blows? Taking fallen's words into account right up there, I guess my raising stealth to the exclusion of other skills on this run has helped a lot. I've never had the thief be surprised by enemies, I always get a chance to pop off an arrow/farsight and then high tail it back to my team. I am using the Cleric as a front line combatant, but not too much in the way of damage dealing. She's up on the front lines to support the Outlander. The Outlander is dealing 90% of the damage, the Cleric just gets to cherry pick kills, cast curses, buff the Outlander, and soak some damage. To that end, I've focused on raising her constitution. |
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Post by slayernz on Oct 29, 2013 16:43:45 GMT -5
So picking the right skills to upgrade first makes a big difference .. I LOVE THIS GAME! So many potential strategies that could be successful: * focus on offensive abilities to begin with = "meh, encounters, I'll kill anything that moves" = aka the mid-game Star Traders feeling * focus on stealth and defensive abilities to begin with = "If they can't see me, they can't hit me" = aka the sneaky sneaky approach * focus on protecting the wizard and making him POWERFUL = "Play with me a while, while my shifty-eyed friend prepares his Nuke" = aka He may be shifty, but he'll save your ass ... |
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Post by johndramey on Oct 29, 2013 16:45:27 GMT -5
Bingo! That's what made me so excited when I first booted up the game. There is a lot of flex in each of the characters, seems like Cory and Andrew tried to give us a couple viable builds per character which is really awesome. Can't wait to see the other classes, should be very interesting.
Seems like we are having a post party here.
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Post by fallen on Oct 29, 2013 23:44:39 GMT -5
Is stealth intended to be stealth as in being unseen and being able to scout out enemies and the like without getting into a combat round as well as essentially an initiative check on which side goes first, or just the latter? - currently stealth has two major affects - reducing the range at which monsters detect you (they are already spawned into the dungeon ... so this is not the distance at which you spawn encounters) and allow you an initiative check as to who goes first. If you win the initiative check, this gives your whole party a "surprise round" in which certain talents will gain extra bonuses (Thief, Silent Stalker ... more on this in other characters like Assassin). Atm, Farsight is your best enemy-scouter. We'd love extra suggestions and are continue to work on some other ideas in this area. |
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Post by hosh on Oct 30, 2013 13:17:36 GMT -5
Nightmare really is well balanced though. Once I started playing conservatively I had much less trouble. Scouting ahead with my thief while leaving the Outlander and Cleric in choke points really works well. Trigger a fight? Pop an arrow or two and retreat! Pretty much how I ended up playing. Though I really want to mess around with scouting with Blacknight. That bug with being unable to use pick lock kinda took the fun out of the game, but it'll be fix in the next round. |
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Post by hosh on Oct 30, 2013 13:25:52 GMT -5
We'd love extra suggestions and are continue to work on some other ideas in this area. I want to be able to use stealth and other actions to manipulate which characters the NPCs pay attention to in combat. If I'm using a lot of big, flashy attacks -- any of the empowered attacks, direct attack spells like fireball, etc., monsters would start paying more attention to it (even if they are intimidated by it). If, during that round (or maybe, use an attention counter that bleeds off), character than activates a stealth skill like Blacknight, it would simulate blending into the background during the distraction. This is like Sun Tzu 101, and I'd be interested in seeing it implemented well in a tactical RPG. I do this when sparring with friends; it is very effective in creating confusion and disrupting things, getting around to flanks, etc. If you guys implement this with torches, that would be even more fun :-D Same with items, or something similar to create distractions so that the scout can stealthily run away. (Ninja, vanish!) Mechanics is simple: if someone is paying more attention to something, there is less available attention to pay to other things. |
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Post by captain nemo on Oct 30, 2013 15:19:48 GMT -5
Awesome - can't wait till the next update ... will we be able to continue our characters through the next phase of Alpha, or do we start from scratch again? No, due to database changes, all groups will have to start over again ... sorry! Bummer !!! But didn't really figure we could keep going with what we had, it is an Alpha after all.. even though it doesn't look like one : ) |
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