KickStarter StarCrawlers - indie sci-fi dungeon crawling RPG

[Bruma Hobo]

Nobody was talking about that, you self-obsessed cretin.

 

[aweigh]

i apolgoize my man.

your posts about how jap wiz-clones and the like aren't "real RPGs" and that they somehow impede "progress" (whatever that may be...) struck me as the sort of thing a small child might say, something like when someone who is new and doesn't know much about what they're talking about goes on to make some sort of statement; they made me realize that you, like many others i imagine, need someone to explain to them how both the codex AND rpgs work!

a lot of these shit posts about factually incorrect stuff, like for example

sorry if it rubbed you the wrong way, but it's the price we pay for learning stuff. now at least i know you are a better human being for having read my post, at least. there is that.... hopefully, someday, i may be able to fix another person's mental deficiency again with another post.

 

[an Administrator]

^ PREACH

 

[bataille]

Oh god, don't you love it when you clumsily stumble through a level, accidentally trip 1 (one) security laser, get almost decimated many times over and then get jumped by a boss encounter (remember the one (1) laser part).
Well, let's hope for the best (spoiler: they gibbed me in 300 time units or so).

Spoiler

On second thought, I think I've failed a hack and my blind soldier alerted a few cameras of her presence before shooting them down (despite having 17 points in the marksman tree).

I can't NOT love how they keep the scope of levels real. The raiding team was really that: a team of 4 mercs that'd hidden in a cargo container on the train and reprogrammed its security measures. You'd expect a video game raid to throw a hundred of enemies at you, not here, though.

 

[roll-a-die]

i apolgoize my man.

your posts about how jap wiz-clones and the like aren't "real RPGs" and that they somehow impede "progress" (whatever that may be...) struck me as the sort of thing a small child might say, something like when someone who is new and doesn't know much about what they're talking about goes on to make some sort of statement; they made me realize that you, like many others i imagine, need someone to explain to them how both the codex AND rpgs work!

a lot of these shit posts about factually incorrect stuff, like for example

sorry if it rubbed you the wrong way, but it's the price we pay for learning stuff. now at least i know you are a better human being for having read my post, at least. there is that.... hopefully, someday, i may be able to fix another person's mental deficiency again with another post.

I feel ya. I went through ages of espousing to friends that C-And-C is the best thing about games in the golden age of ARR PEE GEE circa 1997-2004. The thing that I realize now, as I look at the games I've been playing lately. Is that it's not just that classic ARR PEE GEE like Fallout and Planescape Torment had C and C, but rather that they presented their stuff incredibly well. That they felt good to play, and that their mechanics were relatively sound and fit the flavor of the games story. And the games I tend to like nowadays are also games that do that kind of implementation and tie together of interface, narrative, and gameplay very well. Games like Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, which I've spent about 80 hours on this month. Games like EU4. Games that have good to goodish gameplay, but also, mix that goodish gameplay with their presentation in a way that fits. Other games I've played recently have lost my focus, I don't finish them. Because either in the case of something like Age of Decadence, or Pillars of Eternity, the presentation and difficulty of such a game, doesn't match the level of writing and reward I get from playing it(Oddly I think doing the opposite to the difficulty and presentation of each would be a wonderful solution. Where AoD could use just a tad bit of toning down in difficulty, and an increase in presentation. I wish I could turn PoE's difficulty up even further from the highest difficulty. And that the presentation was rougher). Or in the case of something like Underrail, or Torment Tides or Wasteland 2 where it's clear that it's been overdesigned to be like a game from the past, and it's failed on certain aspects of that, and felt to me like they could have been more interesting if they hadn't been approached as "Let's make something like X or a successor too X"

In essence the key to all those classic games, was like Vegas, theme. The feeling of playing them, has to match the presentation. This is something that Bethesda games since Morrowind haven't gotten. All of these gameplay contrivences, like the Pipboy in fallout. Or Daedric Artefacts in TES. They only worked in part because they fit the theme. They weren't core parts of the game, meant to be focused on. But rather side portions that helped the games fit or build the theme.

 

[Iznaliu]

...something that's been in adventure games since the late 70's.

Adventure games are known for being linear.

 

[aweigh]

roll a die : you said it way better than me

iznaliu: what is the true difference then between branching content and a game being "linear"?

if you do X task Y way then you trigger Z variable which rail-roads you (invariable, thoguh i'm sure there's at least one game that doesnt) into experiencing said content.

if you do Y task in X way then you trigger M variable which rail-roads you into another piece of content.

and let's say for the sake of argument that the game allows ALL global variables, or MOST of them, to be played through in "one single run thru"; is that not "linear"?

i believe simply that branching content != non-linear.

Adventure games were as "linear" as any other of the dime-a-dozen narrative-drive, plot-focused, (usually) companion/henchmen heavy RPGs of today's flash in the pan sizzle reel of a world.

To be honest, i have grown to dislike mutually exclusive game branches. I don't want to have to replay a mediocre game if half of it is locked away; and conversely if the game is GREAT i want to be able to experience all of it in an intelligently designed biomap which lays out the game's topography in a contiguous manner in accordance to player interaction and not in a simple flowchart.

I can go on and on, like how quests... really, what exactly ARE quests? why not just make legitimate emergent gameplay? All quests do is primarily to make the game "linear". It is painfully obvious that most quests (i agree that there are good RPGs, like AoD, where quests are legitimate gameplay elements and not fluff); in most other RPGs it is painfully obvious the quests are the yellow brick road.

very... linear.

PS and before anyone crys that im saying i don't think rpg quests are important: remember that there are better ways to implement real quests in an RPG than the normal way they do so nowadays and that way is to provide the tools, the motivation and the wherewithal to the player and let the player, through playing the actual game, i.e. conflict resolution, resource management, spatial navigation, character advancement and their skill in working thru the game's itemization and that player will not enter a town mindlessly seeking the quest giver, or mindlessly go to X area and do something inconsequential to finish off an active quest flag; instead they'll rely on the game's mechanical systems to provide the questing for them.

perfect example of good quests like that is Arcanum. yes it has the quests i am deriding above, but it also has an unbelievable sandbox to do much better things than getting a ring or whatever.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Sykar]

Get a four or at least three man party? I have 4 crawlers by the start of the 3rd main mission. If that is not an option your Engineer can spec into Bolty and max Strafe. Spec your Smuggler into traps for Holotrap and the Decoy.
Also the earlier you hire new crawlers the cheaper they are. They start at 150 Credits at level 1 and they cost 50 extra credits per level after that so it is wise to hire crawlers early. Hell, there is not really much to spend cash on very early in the game anyway and extra characters help far more than some overpriced trinket from the vendor. I wish she would sell armor and weapons though as the barkeep advertises, the black market guy is not a good source for these since getting the cubes takes a lot of grinding from the random missions and the lottery boxes are way to expensive for random gear.

Essentially the game requires you to have a good number of bodies to spread the damage since there is no priest class in the game that can easily keep you at max health.
The name of the game is attrition and surviving as long as possible while keeping a relatively high health level. There is overall little spike damage and only medkits can deal with them properly.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[bataille]

well... i guess i need help.

Made smuggler and was fine until 3rd mission. This is when I hired rigger and im no longer able to run anything. Im on highest diff and enemies gang on my smuggler. By the end of mission im out of med kits. Need advice how to git gut

You'd probably want at least one character to shield allies or provoke/debilitate enemies if you want your highest damage crawler not to die, because enemies will definitely concentrate their fire on them. I've had a displeasure of having everyone on almost full health and my void psyker barely hanging by a thread on many occasions. I guess threat is generated by the number of hits, not damage. You could also try to have multiple people that hit a million times a turn, I guess, might work as well (to spread damage, not prevent it).

And to everyone who is going to choose a force psyker: don't go the middle road! It's bizarre, but the middle skill tree is almost the exact replica of the left one but maybe three to five times weaker. For a long time I thought force psykers were awful, but then I decided to reset and it was all uphill from there.

 

[Sykar]

by 3rd mission i meant any mission when you get access to random ones for first time. Its also the moment I can finally afford first crew member.
While i did go for bolty on engineer my smuggler did split on traps and gambling(which probably didnt helpt me gather funds).
I guess i need to start over and pick background that starts with money

Huh? I did those with two and three, never had a problem in my first 3 tries. My Void Spiker started with no money and it was no problem with just her and a Hacker after the first main mission.
Which difficulty are the chosen missions?

Also the game has an aggro system.

 

[theSavant]

I remember there was supposed to be a dungeon crawler Kickstarter game that was supposed to be Gold Box style (FP dungeons, tactical battles) and I have a vague recollection that it's supposed to be this game, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

Am I just remembering wrong, or was it a "it was planned but then never accomplished as a Kickstarter goal"?

Yes, I remember too. It was also a Sci-Fi blobber in a spaceship - and no, it was not Starcrawlers. Can't remember its name. I also remember that project changed from blobber view to isometric view later on, which caused some protest. Don't know what happened after, because I lost interest.

Edit: oh wait... wasn't the name something like SpaceShock or so?

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Zetor]

I used the left path for my hacker, and it's good for crowd control, but not that good for damage. It synergizes well with a left-path void psyker to keep most of the enemy team disabled and/or attacking their own friends. The ultimate ability (Snowcrash) is kind of bad compared to other ultimate abilities I've unlocked in other characters, since you need to stun enemies 10 times with your hacker in one fight to use it. Considering that you'd want to use it in tough boss fights where the most important targets are elites with built-in stun resist... yeah. I only have one point in it though, it may reduce the number of charges needed with more points. Advantage is that the path needs basically no gear and synergizes with fast multihit low-damage weapons (due to System Shock), so I just go with something like a smg or light pistol and get a ton of turns while letting everyone else do the killing.

Regarding filling out the party early,

Spoiler

the first 'real' story mission has you investigating a ship, and you fight a killer robot in the end. If you choose to rebuild the robot afterwards, the engineer chick will finish building it after you finish one more mission (just choose the simplest one from the bartender) and it'll join your party as the 'prototype'. It's a pretty strong class IMO, I think the left talent tree is the best for it overall... yes, I do see a trend there.

 

[bataille]

started over hoarded more cash and after 1st mission im able to hire 3rd crew member. That plus having more cc should do the trick.

In the end i want to have smuggler, rigger, ninja and hacker. Should I pick ninja or hacker first? For those 2 which paths are most fun/best?

I don't know about ninja, but hacker with logic bomb + kill switch will annihilate pretty much everything. All you need to do is stack crit chance (for shareware to work) and have someone else critting the enemies affected by logic bomb. When everyone's got logic bomb on them (and, preferably, mindmelt), use kill switch.

 

[bataille]

I used the left path for my hacker, and it's good for crowd control, but not that good for damage. It synergizes well with a left-path void psyker to keep most of the enemy team disabled and/or attacking their own friends. The ultimate ability (Snowcrash) is kind of bad compared to other ultimate abilities I've unlocked in other characters, since you need to stun enemies 10 times with your hacker in one fight to use it. Considering that you'd want to use it in tough boss fights where the most important targets are elites with built-in stun resist... yeah. I only have one point in it though, it may reduce the number of charges needed with more points.

Regarding filling out the party early,

Spoiler

the first 'real' story mission has you investigating a ship, and you fight a killer robot in the end. If you choose to rebuild the robot afterwards, the engineer chick will finish building it after you finish one more mission (just choose the simplest one from the bartender) and it'll join your party as the 'prototype'. It's a pretty strong class IMO, I think the left talent tree is the best for it overall... yes, I do see a trend there.

Are you sure about the 'one fight' part? Because every other final ability I have persist from encounter to encounter. Crits for the soldier, barriers and energy for the force psyker, tributes for the void psyker: all of them accumulate their resources until you use the skill or finish the mission.

 

[Zetor]

I'll check when I get home from work, but I'm pretty sure the wording referred to 10 charges within a single fight. It may still accumulate over multiple fights (in that case it didn't hit the threshold in the last 2 missions I ran, even though I was using the stun every time it came off CD), but then the wording isn't clear.

 

[bataille]

Doesn't seem like it's just one fight. So it's probably a very sweet skill to have.
For context, I'll attach the descriptions of other abilities that I've confirmed to persist from battle to battle.

Spoiler

 

[Zetor]

Yea, in that case Snowcrash is actually pretty damn legit -- level 2+ basically means "party takes 3 free turns" as long as the encounter has 3+ tough enemies instead of a single big boss mob that's immune or heavily resistant against control abilities (cf. diminishing returns from stuns), and in that case it's at least good to deal with trash summons. 10 stuns over a mission is still a lot, though... maybe there's another hacker stun ability other than the one with a 3-turn cooldown, will have to check.

 

[Sykar]

I used the left path for my hacker, and it's good for crowd control, but not that good for damage. It synergizes well with a left-path void psyker to keep most of the enemy team disabled and/or attacking their own friends. The ultimate ability (Snowcrash) is kind of bad compared to other ultimate abilities I've unlocked in other characters, since you need to stun enemies 10 times with your hacker in one fight to use it. Considering that you'd want to use it in tough boss fights where the most important targets are elites with built-in stun resist... yeah. I only have one point in it though, it may reduce the number of charges needed with more points. Advantage is that the path needs basically no gear and synergizes with fast multihit low-damage weapons (due to System Shock), so I just go with something like a smg or light pistol and get a ton of turns while letting everyone else do the killing.

Regarding filling out the party early,

Spoiler

the first 'real' story mission has you investigating a ship, and you fight a killer robot in the end. If you choose to rebuild the robot afterwards, the engineer chick will finish building it after you finish one more mission (just choose the simplest one from the bartender) and it'll join your party as the 'prototype'. It's a pretty strong class IMO, I think the left talent tree is the best for it overall... yes, I do see a trend there.

Really? I went with Evoker on my Void Psyker, Optimization on Hacker, Bolty on Engi and Traps on Smuggler on my first party. My second consists of an Assissination Cyberninja, Specialist Soldier and Tank Force Psyker so far.

I see no trend there, I chose what I need, not "left is best".

 

[Zetor]

I used the left path for my hacker, and it's good for crowd control, but not that good for damage. It synergizes well with a left-path void psyker to keep most of the enemy team disabled and/or attacking their own friends. The ultimate ability (Snowcrash) is kind of bad compared to other ultimate abilities I've unlocked in other characters, since you need to stun enemies 10 times with your hacker in one fight to use it. Considering that you'd want to use it in tough boss fights where the most important targets are elites with built-in stun resist... yeah. I only have one point in it though, it may reduce the number of charges needed with more points. Advantage is that the path needs basically no gear and synergizes with fast multihit low-damage weapons (due to System Shock), so I just go with something like a smg or light pistol and get a ton of turns while letting everyone else do the killing.

Regarding filling out the party early,

Spoiler

the first 'real' story mission has you investigating a ship, and you fight a killer robot in the end. If you choose to rebuild the robot afterwards, the engineer chick will finish building it after you finish one more mission (just choose the simplest one from the bartender) and it'll join your party as the 'prototype'. It's a pretty strong class IMO, I think the left talent tree is the best for it overall... yes, I do see a trend there.

Really? I went with Evoker on my Void Psyker, Optimization on Hacker, Bolty on Engi and Traps on Smuggler on my first party. My second consists of an Assissination Cyberninja, Specialist Soldier and Tank Force Psyker so far.

I see no trend there, I chose what I need, not "left is best".

It wasn't any kind of ~deep thought~, just a funny / throwaway observation.

I chose a playstyle focused on controlling the enemy (stun/charm/confuse), and the hacker/void psyker both use the left tree for that. That however means a slow start in some encounters, so I need to build my soldier as a tank (left tree, again). The prototype is a bit unorthodox here, but after looking at the trees, the left one (focusing on big hits with charge-up times) seemed to synergize best with what I already had, ie. start with the haiku buff from prototype on turn 1, charge the cannon/thunderclap on turn 2, have soldier use the party +damage/crit buff on the same turn (in the meanwhile debuff enemy to take more damage with stun+exploit from hacker), then the prototype can fire off the arm cannon or the thunderclap to murder the crap out of a target or the entire enemy party, removing their shields and buffs at the same time if needed. Sure, it takes 3 turns to set up, but my two controllers will make sure the enemies don't get the chance to do too much damage until then. This also does pretty well on sustain, I only need to use medkits to deal with heavy burst in boss fights (and in many cases I can just coast by that with constant regen from siphon life + keeping the most damaging enemies locked down).

 

[Sykar]

You have to plan for enemies which are CC resistant or even immune though. That is why I like to have a good mix so I can switch up my style.

 

[bataille]

What is a suitable reward for an hour-long, complex mission filled with suspense and drama, where you explore a trapped ship while simultaneously shifting between two dimensions of reality, fighting off eldritch monstrosities and running away from a tentacled world-eater ? Find out under the spoiler.

Spoiler

No rest for the wicked.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Spoiler

meh, i think everyone should enjoy what they want to. i have played literally every single fucking RPG under the sun, since a wee lad, i mean dude... just look at my join date.

and yet my newfound favorite style of RPG comes in turn-based dungeon crawling blobbering. I consider, now, at age 33, that wizardry 1: proving grounds of the mad overlord is a much better desgined RPG than say... well, to pick from your examples: Morrowind.

see, the problem here is that you're conflating liking one thing with disliking another. I very much enjoy the type of R.L. Stein "choose-your-own-death" novels-type approach games like PoE or, to use another of your examples, Fallout, utilize.

you see man, i been here posting about RPGs and arguing with people about which RPG is more RPG than what RPG and the Codex has literally shaped my tastes and my manhood (heh. I went through every single phase the RPG codex has gone through:

- the lament of no RPGs being in development, and endless, ENDLESS reminiscing about Fallout/Arcanum/BG (circa 2003 or so)
- the sudden slow trickle of Morrowind players who found this place by accident and thus, old codex lurkers were exposed to that ilk (i.e. as different as can be from the games I mentioned above which were literlaly the only ones talked about because, frankly, no others were better)

So naturally I read all of the arguments by people like vault dweller and sea and Twinfalls and I started playing everything the codex enjoyed and i had now begin my cee-and-cee phase. that phase lasted quite a while!

you know, i even used to think (during that phase) that those old RPGs that didn't feature all of this amazing stuff like one NPC script being triggered depending on which global values the player "played" through. My god! amazing stuff. But what I didn't realize back then is that the ones I really liked, stuff like ToEE and FO1/2... those games had excellent gameplay mechanics, and those games' CHOICE A/B/C fluff was only there for LARPing.

then I spent like 5 years not playing any RPGs cos I had grown sick of these so-called CandC RPGs. Once you've seen one branching story path, my man, you've seem 'em all.

I discovered now these lil ole games and guess what? their gameplay mechanics are the best out of any RPGs I've ever played as they don't try to do all, hell, i'll admit it myself: they don't try to do much really besides... providing the literal best examples in the RPG over-genre of party building, character advancement, encounter design, itemization and the design of the progressive power curve, the very best spell systems, the most difficult battles, the most satisfying simply put: the best all-around fighting, looting, making an varied party with each member completely unique from the other and each one featuring better character advacement than most new RPGs put together in their entirety.

long story short: I realized I like gameplay now more than a mediocre story with something that does not exist, i.e. the Codex's cee-and-cee. Right now, since you're in this phase yourself, this c-and-c is like some sort of magical game design element that is scorchingly hot and new and unbelievably hard to pull off and any RPG that features even a little bit of it, i.e. gives you a fake choice a, a fake choice b, and a fake choice c, (they're all fake because there is no emergent gameplay to be had in a plot-focused, narrative-driven game like all of the ones that the Codex espouses as "real ones"); but soon enough you will realize that it is...








...something that's been in adventure games since the late 70's. in fact, i have in the past (and would do so again) argued succesfully about how introducing c-and-c does not automatically make a game an RPG, and in point of fact (!), the c-and-c that you seek is not even something that makes an RPG feature good gameplay!

so to finish this up: you feel free to enjoy whatever you want, my man, and so will I. Just remember the age old words of wisdom from myself:

it's always the gameplay that people remember, in the end, everything else is flavor text.

PS. I mean, Wasteland 2 had a lot of c-and-c, and so does TToN. I guess that means they're really really good right?

r00fles!

I agree with this a lot.

I remember reading an old article on Moby Games called the World of Western RPGs, kind of a best-of list in chronological order. The author pretty much nails all the most popular and critically acclaimed RPGs of the period, up to when it was written in 2007:

http://www.mobygames.com/featured_article/feature,31/section,208/

I have no idea if anyone ever read it, it's just some ancient article on the web written by some nobody, yet it perfectly espouses the ideas you are talking about here.


Some highlights:

-The author defines RPGs as "psychological devices that allow the player to discover himself in a safe environment," a statement so pretentious it made me hurt myself from rolling my eyes.

-The author doesn't seem to like many RPGs very much at all. Common complaints include: too much combat, not enough story, not enough Choice and Consequences.

-The only games that receive remotely good praise are (big surprise) Fallout 1&2, Arcanum, Planescape, and Ultima 4.

-He acknowledges games like Diablo and Baldur's Gate sold vastly more copies and were much more popular, but he still declares his personal favorite games to be the most influential in the genre.

-Even though literally every single game on the list revolves around combat, he nonetheless declares that combat is not important to an RPG *at all* and soon future games will do away with it entirely.


I enjoy C&C-based games like Fallout 1&2 (obviously) but its clear that that set of mechanics is just a sub-genre within the RPG whole, not defining of the genre itself. RPGs are primarily fantasy combat simulators. That definition tends to upset the sensibilities of the beret-wearing hipster snob crowd, but oh well.