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Assessing this project


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#1 Avaro

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Posted 10 May 2019 - 03:25 PM

First of all, if you don't know about this project, check out the other update thread first and give the demo a little try. (The demo doesn't have much content or variety)

I love the idea of a randomized dungeon with lots of random stuff in it. The demo was very unfinished and it was probably a bad call to make it for a quest contest, because the scope was too big. I scripted a lot of systems here and it's kind of impressive. The demo doesn't show the potential for the "questionmark" rooms, since all it ever featured was the risk-reward game. Eventually I wanted to have all kinds of stuff like traps, challenges, minigames, whatever. That's the idea. The demo also had the big issue of having too many waves of enemies. The enemies didn't really scale up in power either. I would fix those things if I were to continue this as it is.

But I think I'll wanna redo this project from the ground up. The ideas seem good, but I think some things are fundamentally wrong. Let me go over what I think works and what doesn't in the long run:

What works:
- Tileset, graphics, sound are fine and have potential.
- The combat by itself is good.
- Event rooms are a great idea.
- The way I planned characters basically is good and there's potential.

What doesn't:
- There's not enough meaningful customization for the player.
- The stats are a huge issue. Attack power is too important.
- The passive items feel bad and can't be properly balanced.
- There's no point in the exploration. You just wander around and complete the map.

This project will benefit from rethinking it. I'll want my quest to be something with good combat, randomized stuff and fun customization, but maybe don't make it a dungeon like this? I've learned from this and will tackle this project from a new angle. Thanks for reading and feel free to discuss whatever you like. :D I'm busy with too many other things, so I'll have to get back to this at a future time. I don't know when. Will probably use 2.55 too, because I gotta get into it eventually.


Edited by Avataro, 10 May 2019 - 03:26 PM.

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#2 Aevin

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Posted 10 May 2019 - 04:48 PM

I think the issues you mentioned are real ones. I like the random dungeon generation; it's one of my favorite things about the quest. But I have to admit that there was never a feeling of thinking through how to tackle the exploration. It was always just "go down this path, see everything, go down next path." Maybe if there were some way of discouraging the player from seeing everything, so they have to make actual decisions about which paths they do and don't go down? This could take the form of really challenging combat, limited keys, or some other thing.

 

My main thought on the quest is unfortunately not an easy one to address. I like the content that was there, but to keep it interesting, I feel like there just needs to be more content. More items. More monsters. More room types. But of course, I know from experience that that's not easy to develop for, and if you really did develop that much content, maybe you'd get more bang for your buck in putting it in a different quest.

 

I'm curious to see what others think on the subject and what you end up doing with it. I've always been pretty intrigued by this project, so I'm interested in seeing it fully realized.


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#3 Avaro

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Posted 10 May 2019 - 06:42 PM

Those are valid ideas on how the dungeon structure could be made to work. The random dungeon is such a cool concept but I don't think this quest does it justice. I do think this quest needs rethinking :) About the content thing, yeah I know, I'd like to see how this quest would've been like if it was developed more.

 

Something I forgot to mention: I wanna thank all the previous players of the demo who gave tons of great feedback! Helps a lot.


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#4 Jamian

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Posted 11 May 2019 - 01:24 PM

I've played the demo and enjoyed it. At the moment it doesn't quite fully "work" yet, but I can tell that's because of the WIP status.

 

Here are my suggestions for improvements:

 

- Having a square dungeon every time is a bit boring. I'd prefer having a semi-random number of rooms, in a random pattern, so that the player never knows what to expect map-wise. Cfr. The Binding of Isaac and my related To The Bottom project to see what I mean.

 

- Speaking of the map, I think it is too generous to make it work on all floors. Same thing with the compass. Knowing the layout of a floor as soon as you enter it makes it less intimidating. Those items should work for the current floor only.

 

- Bosses are too easy. The boss fights were very cool, but they were less dangerous than normal rooms. I think a boss fight should be at least as hard as a regular room.

 

- Your character grows in power, but the enemies don't really do that. So the game gets easier as you go along. I suppose it's because you haven't gotten around to making harder enemies for the deeper floors.

 

- Random event rooms don't give a clear enough signal telling you if you've won or lost. I usually had to look at my stats afterwards to figure out whether it was a win or a loss.

 

- I'd like to see random events that involve more elaborate things than picking a "take a chance / don't" option. Again look up The Binding of Isaac / To The Bottom for some ideas (curse rooms, challenge rooms, etc.)

 

- Secret rooms are missing. A Zelda-like game, even if it's a dungeon romper, can always benefit from having secrets.

 

- As others have mentioned, exploration doesn't really work because you can afford to just visit all the rooms one by one. In a game like Slay the Spire, you had to think carefully when choosing a path, wondering what the best option would be, and calculating the risk/reward ratio. That feeling is missing here.

 

- Whenever I picked an item at the end of a boss fight, the "right" item to pick was obvious. The items that gave you penalties did not give you enough benefits in return, so I always went with the item that solely gave benefits. Making these choices harder, with a better balancing of items, would be a good thing.


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#5 Dark Ice Dragon

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Posted 23 May 2019 - 03:47 PM

today i made another play, after clear it i was wondering of good i was, ... maybe add score or ranks, someting  like S-A-B-C-D-E-F...maybe you may get a perfect score if you clear in a time limit,if you take all important items ,if you don't skip any bet ( no matter if you lose or win ) and enter in ALL rooms.

If then a good score unlock something...




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