ELEX ELEX RELEASE THREAD

[Haplo]

I'm not saying to start stronger. I'm advocating a longer mid-game with more growth/progression.

 

[Bad Sector]

while being strong kills it all.

That's the point :-P.

 

[BruceVC]

I recently got around to finishing Elex 1, first started it close to release, then shelved, figured it was about time to complete it.



I ended up really enjoying the final 10 or so hours of the game and ultimately I'd rate it as a positive experience, however I probably spent 3-4 times that running from pretty much everything before getting strong enough to mount any kind of reasonable defense in combat. So people said the exploration was great, that wasn't my experience as for the lion's share of your first playthrough, there's no real joy in exploration as you're always just one scratch away from death. To me, the jetpack almost felt like a cheap solution to the game's exploration/progression path having having no/little structure/balance, and thus needing to give the player a quick means of escape at all times.

I'm looking forward to Elex 2, despite most of the above being gripes, Elex 1 still does a lot of the things that made PB's past games great, but I hope there's some improvements on the progression & difficulty fronts.

For me that was one of the best things around ELEX 1. The fact that in the beginning you had to be wary because the world is brutal and their are many monsters that can slaughter you easily ...and yes I also had to run away a lot. :D

It added a level of excitement and caution that is not common in many games nowadays. And I enjoyed the necessity to explore with very little hand holding and map markers making it easier to get from point a to point b

ELEX 2 is going to be epic

 

[BruceVC]

Conversely with Elex, even early game quests will want to ship you off to Tavarr, and even the most rudimentary enemy will obliterate you en-route. And that applies no matter which direction you set out from Goliet, it felt. The initial hump/hurdle felt like it took much longer to surmount than past PB games because it feels that no matter which way you set out, it's the "wrong" path if you even dare to engage in combat.

You're not supposed to stop and fight. Just run constantly, all enemies will give up the chase. You can pretty much go anywhere from the start, you just can't kill anything.

Yeah that's actually one of the really cool things about the game for me, it makes the power fantasy payoff you get later impactful, you get your revenge on those pesky things that were so terrifying early on, plus it's a good adrenaline rush to escape by the skin of your teeth when you're effectively powerless (unless you have exceptional twitch skills).

Also you can use the AI on lower levels to defeat difficult mobs , I remember on level 4 or 5 I made a slugbeast chase me back to the Berserker camp. I kept its aggro going with ranged attacks and it kept pursing me. On the way back to the camp some silly cultivators needlessly sacrificed themselves by attacking the foul beast which was hilarious ...eventually I got back to the Berserker main hall and the slugbeast was killed by the high level fighters

I didnt gain XP but I got the items it was guarding

 

[gurugeorge]

This reminds me of something I've always wondered about. There's a sense in which vertical progression is actually meaningless, an illusion, and only relative strength (+ or - level to you, e.g. a purple or blue mob in an MMO) and horizontal progression are really meaningful.

When you start off your strike takes 2 hp away from 8; when you're at mid level your strike takes 20 hp away from 80, at max level 200 from 800 - what the hell is the difference? There isn't any, the sense of "progression" there is just smoke and mirrors. All that happens in a game is that your personal skill gets better, and you get more toys to play with and integrate into the "dance" of your personal skill.

 

[gurugeorge]

Conversely with Elex, even early game quests will want to ship you off to Tavarr, and even the most rudimentary enemy will obliterate you en-route. And that applies no matter which direction you set out from Goliet, it felt. The initial hump/hurdle felt like it took much longer to surmount than past PB games because it feels that no matter which way you set out, it's the "wrong" path if you even dare to engage in combat.

You're not supposed to stop and fight. Just run constantly, all enemies will give up the chase. You can pretty much go anywhere from the start, you just can't kill anything.

Yeah that's actually one of the really cool things about the game for me, it makes the power fantasy payoff you get later impactful, you get your revenge on those pesky things that were so terrifying early on, plus it's a good adrenaline rush to escape by the skin of your teeth when you're effectively powerless (unless you have exceptional twitch skills).

Also you can use the AI on lower levels to defeat difficult mobs , I remember on level 4 or 5 I made a slugbeast chase me back to the Berserker camp. I kept its aggro going with ranged attacks and it kept pursing me. On the way back to the camp some silly cultivators needlessly sacrificed themselves by attacking the foul beast which was hilarious ...eventually I got back to the Berserker main hall and the slugbeast was killed by the high level fighters

I didnt gain XP but I got the items it was guarding

Yeah I did sort of thing that a few times. It used to be pretty commonly possible in the kinds of MMOs where you had to go a looooong way to drop aggro, but I don't recall seeing it done as much in single-player games. Very cool. Very proper realtime gameplay.

 

[anvi]

All this talk of starting underpowered... I'd rather the main character remained weak the whole game than start stronger. Being weak creates challenge to be overcome with skill, wits and creativity, while being strong kills it all.

The only thing the game needs is to remain hard after mid-game. And then anyone who can't take it can just choose a lower difficulty.

I think the days of getting balance like that in an indie game are mostly gone.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Is this technically an indie game?

 

[Roguey]

Is this technically an indie game?

It's funded by a publisher, so no.

 

[Ismaul]

This reminds me of something I've always wondered about. There's a sense in which vertical progression is actually meaningless, an illusion, and only relative strength (+ or - level to you, e.g. a purple or blue mob in an MMO) and horizontal progression are really meaningful.

When you start off your strike takes 2 hp away from 8; when you're at mid level your strike takes 20 hp away from 80, at max level 200 from 800 - what the hell is the difference? There isn't any, the sense of "progression" there is just smoke and mirrors. All that happens in a game is that your personal skill gets better, and you get more toys to play with and integrate into the "dance" of your personal skill.

Well, that might be true if you're always fighting the standard amount of level-appropriate opponents. In such a case, difficulty for the player remains theorically always the same, the "challenge level" is constant.

But there's issues with that view. First, it's missing the fact of player mastery; the player knows more about the game and the innerworkings of the rules the more he progresses, so he should be better at it. Therefore, if the designer keeps opponent challenge constant, the player still feels progression because he's better at the game.

Second, this view also misses the fact that the character is progressing, even if the challenge for the player were to remain the same. The enemies fought at higher level are, in the setting, stronger than the ones fought at lower level. So there is a sense of in-setting character progression.

So with both those things, even if we only fought opponents that provided a constant amount of challenge independently of our character's level, there would still be both player and character progression.

But a designer shouldn't aim for the player to always encounter a fixed number of scaled-to-your-level opponents. At higher levels, you can still fight easier enemies that used to give you a hard time, and that allows you to see progression: "it used to be hard, now it's much easier to deal with". The inclusion of lower-level opponents is integral to a realistic setting with free-roaming, as PB is known to do. And to make the fights still challenging, you can have more of those little buggers, now easy individually but challenging in a group, or combine them with a harder opponent. You can also present an enemy that is too strong at X point, but that later you're able to fight.

So you can also get the feeling of progression when the opponents are not level-scaled, and you encounter opponents of varying levels of challenge at a given character level.

Because of all this, I conclude that games where progression feel like an illusion are just badly designed.

 

[gurugeorge]

This reminds me of something I've always wondered about. There's a sense in which vertical progression is actually meaningless, an illusion, and only relative strength (+ or - level to you, e.g. a purple or blue mob in an MMO) and horizontal progression are really meaningful.

When you start off your strike takes 2 hp away from 8; when you're at mid level your strike takes 20 hp away from 80, at max level 200 from 800 - what the hell is the difference? There isn't any, the sense of "progression" there is just smoke and mirrors. All that happens in a game is that your personal skill gets better, and you get more toys to play with and integrate into the "dance" of your personal skill.

Well, that might be true if you're always fighting the standard amount of level-appropriate opponents. In such a case, difficulty for the player remains theorically always the same, the "challenge level" is constant.

But there's issues with that view. First, it's missing the fact of player mastery; the player knows more about the game and the innerworkings of the rules the more he progresses, so he should be better at it. Therefore, if the designer keeps opponent challenge constant, the player still feels progression because he's better at the game.

Second, this view also misses the fact that the character is progressing, even if the challenge for the player were to remain the same. The enemies fought at higher level are, in the setting, stronger than the ones fought at lower level. So there is a sense of in-setting character progression.

So with both those things, even if we only fought opponents that provided a constant amount of challenge independently of our character's level, there would still be both player and character progression.

But a designer shouldn't aim for the player to always encounter a fixed number of scaled-to-your-level opponents. At higher levels, you can still fight easier enemies that used to give you a hard time, and that allows you to see progression: "it used to be hard, now it's much easier to deal with". The inclusion of lower-level opponents is integral to a realistic setting with free-roaming, as PB is known to do. And to make the fights still challenging, you can have more of those little buggers, now easy individually but challenging in a group, or combine them with a harder opponent. You can also present an enemy that is too strong at X point, but that later you're able to fight.

So you can also get the feeling of progression when the opponents are not level-scaled, and you encounter opponents of varying levels of challenge at a given character level.

Because of all this, I conclude that games where progression feel like an illusion are just badly designed.

Excellent points. The reason the topic has always teased me is because I remember an occasion when I was playing City of Heroes (back in 2004 or so), when it suddenly occurred to me that what was really meaningful in terms of progression was the progression from just being able to handle a few "white" mobs, or maybe one "orange" and one "white," when I was a noob, to being capable of handling a bunch of "reds" and "purples" by the endgame (if I kept alert and played smart) - that and my better skill and more toys. That was satisfying because as a noob purples were terrifying. But then when I was "mentoring" some newbies at that point (doing early level missions with them, scaled down), I noticed that the percentage "chunk" I was taking out of mobs with strikes was only really a bit less than the chunks I'd take out of high level mobs.

That's always made me aware of the partly psychological nature of the business. In a sense, you're always level scaled, even when you think you're not. Except for (as you say) the presence of lower level mobs giving a sense of objective difference in relation to the game world.

Which is all fine, but in a way it slightly goes against the simulationist aspect. In real life, the differences between antagonists aren't so great as in a game. Real big differences between enemies do make some kind of sense in high fantasy or in a superhero context, but it does put a burden on developers when they're trying to eke out that kind of progressive salient difference in a more realistic setting (e.g. a military or low fantasy).

 

[Peachcurl]

This reminds me of something I've always wondered about. There's a sense in which vertical progression is actually meaningless, an illusion, and only relative strength (+ or - level to you, e.g. a purple or blue mob in an MMO) and horizontal progression are really meaningful.

When you start off your strike takes 2 hp away from 8; when you're at mid level your strike takes 20 hp away from 80, at max level 200 from 800 - what the hell is the difference? There isn't any, the sense of "progression" there is just smoke and mirrors. All that happens in a game is that your personal skill gets better, and you get more toys to play with and integrate into the "dance" of your personal skill.

That's just life man. You start your working life, but have to fund your own living. You get a raise, taxes grow. You get a promotion, kids need money for college.

No progress, my dude.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

Proof that we're living in the best timeline. This foreshadows a new golden age for the Codex!

 

[Alienman]

Just got the pre-order for Elex 2. Now it just have to be good. Plz be good.

 

[Billi205]

I just pre-order Elex II as well. Elex was and is the first open world 3D game I ever played as I mainly play RPG and XCOM 2. Was really struggling at first and gave up. Then I started looking up guides and where to find weapons and things started to go up from there.

I gotta say the game environment is absolutely beautiful. The desert area has to be the best I ever experienced and is my favourite area, granted that I don't play many AAA games.

Very exciting. At least, something to look forward to!

 

[covr]

Well, I've pre-ordered ELEX 2 boxed edition Xbox and apparently I should have it later today or tomorrow. Does it activates on 1st March or will I be able to play some late beta before that?

 

[Alex]

This reminds me of something I've always wondered about. There's a sense in which vertical progression is actually meaningless, an illusion, and only relative strength (+ or - level to you, e.g. a purple or blue mob in an MMO) and horizontal progression are really meaningful.

When you start off your strike takes 2 hp away from 8; when you're at mid level your strike takes 20 hp away from 80, at max level 200 from 800 - what the hell is the difference? There isn't any, the sense of "progression" there is just smoke and mirrors. All that happens in a game is that your personal skill gets better, and you get more toys to play with and integrate into the "dance" of your personal skill.

That is because so many games have the numbers as arbitrary stuff they just inflate as needed. People will point to D&D's hit points as an example of this, but if the game is played with at least some degree of realism instead of simply level scaling stuff to the party level; then levelling up does indeed make a difference. For instance, in a camapaign the GM might throw hit dice appropriate monsters (or CR appropriate monsters if you want) at a party at all times; while in another the number of people above level 9 is actually tracked and orcs don't disappear from roads just because the party increased in level (although they might start using better tactics against them because they heard of them and how they fought in the past).

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I'm really debating at this point do I want to preorder or not. God dammit I'm not sure.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

never preorder. not even if it's the brand new blowjob from sasha grey. never preorder.

 

[gurugeorge]

never preorder. not even if it's the brand new blowjob from sasha grey. never preorder.

As others have observed, pre-ordering only made sense when games were on physical media that could sell out quickly in a shop on launch. It's a silly, pointless idea with downloadable games.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

"silly, pointless idea"? i'm from the george carlin school of naming thing with the right, appropriate name: it's retarded, makes no sense, incentivizes releasing unfinished, nonworking products.

 

[Alienman]

never preorder. not even if it's the brand new blowjob from sasha grey. never preorder.

As others have observed, pre-ordering only made sense when games were on physical media that could sell out quickly in a shop on launch. It's a silly, pointless idea with downloadable games.

Well, it's 10% off, and you can still refund within 2 hours if something is really broken. I think if you play with disconnected internet, Steam don't even count the hours if you are really unsure about the product. But don't quote me on that.

 

[Alienman]

"No" as in it doesn't work? Steam tracks you even if you disable your internet cord even?

 

[GhostCow]

"No" as in it doesn't work? Steam tracks you even if you disable your internet cord even?

It will just track the played time and then upload it next time you connect. Gaben isn't dumb enough to let you abuse the refund system like that.

 

[Alienman]

"No" as in it doesn't work? Steam tracks you even if you disable your internet cord even?

It will just track the played time and then upload it next time you connect. Gaben isn't dumb enough to let you abuse the refund system like that.

Well, I was thinking the same, but I remember playing when the internet was completely cut here, and nothing got updated. Not playtime, not achievements etc.