yeah, i played some more and got used to the whole thing. real time outside of combat still bothers me, though. they could have gone with turn based map movement with low view range. as in lower than walking range. the danger would have still been there but moving around at a certain set speed and waiting on the loot/gear to get repaired for minutes because you are at least somewhat safer near a town would not have been such a bore. also fucking trees on the combat map piss me off. they hide stuff from me that my units could see very well. seriously, just make them smaller or replace them with symbols of trees. and give me a fucking hex grid i don't really know most of the time where one ends and another begins. gonna post more issues if i find more.nice game. only started it once and bought myself a 4th mercenary thinking if he's expensive he'd be more valuable. had to read 16 pages of this thread to understand why i lost my first battle and everyone got killed and the combat log wouldn't tell me why my people died. maybe stuff like that should be somewhere in the game like a big fucking warning in the intro: "you will suck, your bros will die and you will learn!" only thing left to do is start over.
on a side note, since i'm not gonna read another 16 pages because i wanna play it again: what's up with the real time on the map? all i hear is turn based tactical combat and the world map sucks my coins and food out of my pockets while i look at / search for locations. as a turn based player, which i am whenever i feel like playing a turn based game, this is a huge issue. maybe i'll get used to it. maybe not. but what were your thoughts when you made such a design decision? i mean it should be clear from the get go that someone who wants to play a turn based game does not want to be put under time pressure.
I'd also like to know why your units can miss in this game. if it's about tactics, what is the point of the randomness generator?
The real time map and being being able to miss in combat, coupled with permanent death, is part of the X-COM way of evoking tension that the game is going for (the devs are big X-COM fans). Outside of combat, not having turns means that you are never safe while moving around and you have to keep an eye on your resources. Inside of combat, being able to miss means you are almost never guaranteed to deal with a threat and have to be able to react to unexpected results. Me, I liked it in X-COM and I like it here as well. It's part of why I'm recommending the game to people not just as an RPG, but as a spiritual sequel to X-COM. The combat is also so lethal that hitting or missing does not slow it down - that's usually my problem with it in other games, as I just get bored having to wait for someone to get hit and die already.
Just in case you didn't know, you can pause on the strategic map by pressing space. The game's UI isn't very clear on this (it'll get reworked at one point in the development process), but it helps if you want to look around at your own pace. The missing also becomes less of an issue as you play more, as you learn how to make the most of the Outnumbered bonus, what weapons to use against whom and get some levels on your mercs.
aside from that, the game is incline all the way. nice job. since the game is playable and good i'll mark it as released early access on my list thread.
game unrelated issue: please don't use diablo 3 as an example of anything, especially not when it comes to itemization. i wouldn't even call the special items legendary, i'd go with artifacts. i'm almost sure you're not stupid enough to implement the boots of shitting fire while kiting but if you notice the "almost" in this sentence you should realize why it's not good to mention diablo 3.
EDIT: like i said, if i find more issues i'll post them. i can't say i like the perks and the perk system. here's my suggestion: since the game is in early access: make them powerful, make them mandatory or optional (as in, if i click on my soldier and saw that he leveled up but didn't invest anything in perks, remove the level up arrow, else i can't keep track of level ups or make me choose), balance them out with powerful penalties. not gonna suggest whether they should all be situational, or all general, or both since i'm not gonna spend hours of thinking up some and then comparing them in my mind. the game is at an experimental stage and people should have something to experiment with. it's also single player so it doesn't need to be microbalanced. none of that +something% crap. it's just too easy and predictable and not fun for the player to chose between numbers and it's lazy of you to implement it that way. i also don't like how i need to spend a certain amount of perk points to be able to unlock more perks. it doesn't make any sense. i might not need all or any of the previous perks and if the higher tier perks are too powerful for lowies, why would the game allow lowies to be ambushed by orc warriors? if the game is open world and anything goes, don't impose level requirements. make it interesting, not linear. for more randomness and rogue like feeling + a bunch of replayability and motivation to release mercs and hire new ones you could even randomize the penalties. here's an example from stone soup mutations: you can get antennae growing on your head which let you detect creatures behind walls if i remember correctly but you can't wear any helmets any more. here's the addaptation to your game: max mustermann learned from experience to watch out for color contrasts when looking over the battlefield. he gains +3 vision. he thinks it's one of the most important reasons for still being alive so he refuses to wear any headgear that impairs his view. feel free to play some stone soup or come up with your own ideas, but please replace the boring perk system. the randomized version: max mustermann learned from experience to watch out for color contrasts when looking over the battlefield. he gains +3 vision. he also sprayed his ankle too often and is now very careful when walking. he needs +1 action points for every move on the battlefield. i don't think you can argue that this kind of advancement isn't much more natural, organic, personal and fun.
it also kills max mustermann every time you retreat, since he's never gonna make it to the map margin before the enemies get him.
next issue: world map speed seriously needs to be increased and/or the repair, recover health system needs to be made instant. it's just too stupid to wait around till your healt/gear fills up and it will be done since it's also stupid to attack anyone with missing health/bad gear. i get it how it can happen that you get attacked when not yet at full health/repaired gear but i've been playing since yesterday and not once did that happen. a simple effective solution would be repairing, healing in towns and outposts. you could even let the system in place and still implement instant healing and repairs in towns since having arrived at a town people will want to do stuff like get quests or move on, not wait several days there so the stuff and health gets fixed. i know even towns get attacked, but seriously the towns have some kind of basic militia to help anyway. so when they get attacked the fights are not that hard. OR you could just implement turn based world map. it would/should speed things up quite a bit. also the map needs more population. as it stands it feels empty. lots of moving around, not many objects (caravans, armies, locations). i know they are there, but i'd just like more of them and less need to move around for days with nothing to see.
next issue: i'm not sure rogue likes need different difficulty settings. been playing on easy and since i can buy heavy armor from the start all the time my people rarely get killed if at all. i thought this game was about having your units get killed. why is this an issue since it's basically my fault for playing on easy? it's an issue because it removes the element of surprise and the element of learning to play the game. monster abilities, trying out perks... so you think to yourself, normal is pretty hard why not learn about the game a bit before playing on normal and try easy instead? and by the time you're done much of the incentive to play it again on normal or even hard is gone because there's not much new for you to experience. remove difficulty levels. choose a starting environment that provides some challenge and go with that.
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