My thoughts so far

[ScrObot]

I updated two days ago, on 0.99.022515 right now. Aristotle and crew, could you guys post when you update (and what you've updated, if possible)?

I've gotten spoiled by Arcen's up-to-the-minute and highly detailed forthcoming release notes, as well as Soldak's.

[Aristotle]

I realized that all of my comments on gameplay have given a one sided view of what I think of the game. Let me correct that. I am enjoying the game a lot. I like almost all of the parts of it.

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(snip rest of paragraph)

Thank you for posting this. It actually really does help put all the other feedback in context. It is good to know that you are really enjoying the game and that the feedback is just a desire to help us make it perfect.

I generally try to assume that, because the folks playing the game right now:

1. backed us on a crowdfunding site
2. are willing to play a non-perfected version
3. are willing to take time to post on a forum and share their thoughts.

As far as game play balancing goes, I consider the elementalist too hard and the bouncy boss (level 30 I think) was too easy.

Their board types have been switched. That should be a huge improvement.

I don't know for certain, but I believe that the elementalist boss and level 37 and 38 were designed to be gear checks.

They weren't. There was a very significant bug with frozen runes (the spawn rate) that made those boards ludicrously hard. That bug is fixed!

One more game play comment/question - On level 37 there are little glowy outlined squares.

Those are empowered runes. They are a GOOD THING .

The elemental bolts they shoot do 50% more damage. They are explained on the list of special runes that is the 2nd or 3rd battlefield tutorial screen.

Perhaps you could put on the spell research description a picture of the corrupted/locked/frozen rune that the spell is meant to cure.

That is a great idea.

Anyway, I am enjoying the game and I look forward to its continued refinement.

Thank you. We look forward to making it even more awesome!

[Aristotle]

Oh, and in regards to the previous comment about the quests - I like the idea of putting the reward for the quest right in the description. It also would be an interesting idea if you could win items like lumber or minerals as a quest reward. For those of us stuck on resources and are looking for a reason to play old levels again, going back and replaying levels while focusing on quests would be a fun dynamic.

Are you some kind of future telling psychic?

We decided against adding a market for a number of game design and sylistic reasons. We decided to look for a different, better solution. We had another problem where people didn't care about quests and they weren't exciting. We made the exact same conclusion you did and I believe we killed 2 birds with one stone.

A completed quest:



People who want to farm/grind resources can do so by focusing on quests.

People who want to play aynchronously can still do so.

Win win? I hope so!

[sonikku2008]

Those are empowered runes. They are a GOOD THING .

The elemental bolts they shoot do 50% more damage. They are explained on the list of special runes that is the 2nd or 3rd battlefield tutorial screen.

Allow me to add to this. The squares themselves will empower any rune that stops in it. If the rune falls out of the empowered square after it stopped in it, it is still empowered, but it's only the rune that glows, not the square itself. If a rune falls through, but does not stop on, the square, that rune will not be empowered.

Edit: @Aristotle: Saw that as I was playing the updated version. Definitely helpful, especially with telling us what we actually got for our troubles.

[Aristotle]

My thoughts so far? The interface and tutorials are clunky.

We ran numerous blind tests on the UI with hugely varied groups of people: experienced gamers, casual gamers, people who rarely or never play games, and people of various ages. On one occasion we tested the game with a group of 7 year olds. There were different things the different groups struggled with (and we tried to improve those), but the one thing nobody had trouble with was the UI.

Thus you can imagine my surprise to see this, and unfortunately "clunky" isn't helpful.

[Aristotle]

We really need to get away from this in my opinion. This isn't a valid mechanic for a PC game.

It is perfectly valid and exists in tons of strategy and building games. We didn't invent this mechanic for the PC, and it existed on the PC before mobile was even around.

You will get all the spells eventually. Tier 3 and Tier 5 spells are incredibly powerful.

The research time is part of the self regulating difficulty.

• The better you are at the game, the faster you will reach level 50, and thus you don't need tier 3, 4, and 5 spells as soon. You probably do not even need tier 5 spells at all, and should learn them while working on the Infinity Tower, gold flagging, or some other "end game" activity.
  
  
• If you are worse at the game, you will fail levels more often and take longer to reach level 50. Thus you will have tier 3, 4, and 5 spells at a lower level.
  
  
• Or, if you simply want to have them at a lower level regardless of your progression, just leave the game running while your research is going, or farm levels for triads, resources, and gold flags.

With 0 scholars, you will learn all the spells in 27 hours.

With 20 scholars by the time you start tier 3, you will learn them all in 22 hours.

The game has far more gameplay than that. Open up your profile and you can find "Total Time Played" as the last line in the middle, and "Total Time in Battle" as the last line of the right pane.

[sonikku2008]

FINALLY BEAT 40!

Okay, I don't entirely get why, but if you can beat the Cubicle before it launches that massively damaging attack on you, you CAN beat the level. But it took a random Match 7 nuke to happen before I could beat him fast enough. I DO know that the first time the Cubicle uses that attack, his birds attack you in a spot above the board. Because they're not properly in a lane, the game may not be counting those specific birds as killed when they hit your wall as a result. That may be why the progress bar does not fill when the remaining enemies are killed off, and that may be why I got stuck on that level for such a long time.

[Aristotle]

FINALLY BEAT 40!

Okay, I don't entirely get why, but if you can beat the Cubicle before it launches that massively damaging attack on you, you CAN beat the level. But it took a random Match 7 nuke to happen before I could beat him fast enough. I DO know that the first time the Cubicle uses that attack, his birds attack you in a spot above the board. Because they're not properly in a lane, the game may not be counting those specific birds as killed when they hit your wall as a result. That may be why the progress bar does not fill when the remaining enemies are killed off, and that may be why I got stuck on that level for such a long time.

This is strange because I beat him 5 different times today and had zero issues. Do you have any way to video capture (maybe via twitch?) the battle so we can watch what happens when he fails to die for you?

[sonikku2008]

I'll see what I can do about it tomorrow after class. If I can replicate it, I'll highlight it out and either post it here or send it to the support e-mail.

[Cricket]

I'll see what I can do about it tomorrow after class. If I can replicate it, I'll highlight it out and either post it here or send it to the support e-mail.

No need to go through the hassle of screen grabbing this. The bug was found, fixed and released in today's build. In case you're the type of person that just has to know the cause of the bug, the pokka that were exploding on your tower weren't getting ticked off as killed monsters, and thus if even one did that the level wouldn't end. Thank you for pointing that out.