Game News Expeditions: Viking Released

[Cynicus]

What happens when it runs out?

You lose.

Edit: To quote one of the devs from steam forums...

It's not set up for you to fail, more as a reminder "I have to build a ship and gather my people before spring" or "I have to accomplish my goals in Britain before autumn".

You can absolutely do things in the order you want and have time to spare.

So, time pressure then. That's what I thought but wasn't sure. I must have zoned out if it was mentioned in the tutorial popups.

 

[Jrpgfan]

Game is not popamole, it just has a few questionable design choices.

But if the encounters are too easy and you can max some of your core skills early on, what is the point of playing the game?

Some key fights are relatively challenging(so far it's been 2 for me- Osred's men and Hooegarda or whatever the fuck she's called). That can be easily improved in future updates though by either changing the structure of some encounters or balancing the combat system.

 

[Barbarian]

Have you tried hard/insane difficulties?

game is ez pz on insane if you play using tools given

Without creating 3 camp/craft bots it isn't easy at all. Particularly true in the beginning of the game when you don't have that. Some fights were tough with my diplomacy/leadership/sense character, and now that I am in the brittish isles some fights are particularly challenging even though my characters are well developed.

 

[hivemind]

creating 3camp/craft slaves is using the tools given, that's why I think it's a terrible design


and idk denmark was p easy even before I made craft bot, only fight that required more than 1 reload was the retarded ambush where you run into 4 archers

but yeah I can imagine that some of the britain fights can be hard if you aren't all fully equipped with broken weapons that's why I said I'll try it that way next

do you use crafting from merchants or no crafted items at all?

 

[Saark]

I mean you can ignore them, but 2 of the most important materials (scavenge and leather) and to some extent, herbs, are mainly gotten from looting. Leather and herbs is somewhat more visible because there are some unique containers for them, but for scavenge, happy box opening.

With Repair 5 a generally shitty item gets you 15+ scavenge per item, while you occassionally find 1-2 in a barrel. Same goes for medicine, herbs and rations, sure you can click every barrel in town, or you just spend 10 of those "hard" earned scavenge you just got off that 3-7dmg knife for buying 100 medicine/150 rations. I only ever click chests/herbs/hides now, since as you already mentioned those are fairly easy to distinguish from generic crap and aren't that widespread anyway. Everything else you just trade for, unless your OCD bugs you. I think there was no real other option to include a lot of the crafting materials required for potions/traps unless you simply wanted to buy them from a vendor, which is kind of uninspired and boring.

Having that many different resources, aswell as money, in a game that revolves around both looting aswell as bartering is pretty impossible to balance to begin with. It works fine in the denmark-part of the campaign and once you start actually doing viking-things, you won't have to worry about most of them anymore since you can just steal, plunder and trade for whatever your small party requires. The only somewhat rare resources are hides and slaves, both of which can be bought with money, but since I am a greedy motherfucker I rather keep my money so I can fall asleep on my pile of gold.

 

[Lhynn]

The looting thing was definately a step in wrong direction. I know some consider going through each trash heap a RPG staple but.. no. Just no.

Agree, thats what RPG afficionados do when they feel like playing a new RPG, dont feel like repeating the experience once im playing the game.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Goddamnit I want to keep playing this so bad, but feel like I'd be doing myself a favor to wait for a couple more patches to iron out bugs and add features/re-balance some things. How has the difficulty/balance/camping been working out in your playthrough, Lhynn?

 

[Barbarian]

I think in one the last mini updates they nerfed archery, which is great. In insane difficulty at least you now miss a lot of shots. Used to be you would hit everything and quickshot was the most powerful skill in the game.

 

[Cynicus]

They've got a beta patch out and are looking for testers: http://steamcommunity.com/app/445190/discussions/0/1318836262668305881/

 

[Alienman]

Man, we are literally beta testing

 

[hivemind]

shitshow of a launch but at least they are trying

 

[Infinitron]

Man, we are literally beta testing

Not unheard of to beta test post-release patches, Underrail recently did this.

 

[Sensuki]

DotA 2 does it as well

 

[Kem0sabe]

Beta testing a game that was released at full price, with game breaking bugs aparently... Underrail was years at less than 15€, and at release was playable from start to end.

Also, these small developers live and die by the goodwill of their customers, unlike the larger developers who can release crap to patch later. Pissing it away in the form of poor steam scores due to bugs, is not good business sense.

 

[Sensuki]

It was in development for 6 years or so (?) but it is a testament to their software engineering for sure. With Viking, a lot of the content in Viking appears to have been only finished right before the "release" date.

So far I haven't encountered any quest bugs although I am sure they are there. Mostly technical stuff, some chest ownership bugs and an exploit or two.

The game runs better than the beta and there are some minor UI improvements, but combat is a fair bit easier than the last beta.

 

[Lyre Mors]

The game runs better than the beta and there are some minor UI improvements, but combat is a fair bit easier than the last beta.

If any of the devs are reading this thread, any chance of getting an additional difficulty mode or just added difficulty/nerfing across the board? I know you guys have your plate full at the moment, but this does seem like a common complaint.

 

[Sensuki]

I doubt it's a priority as they need to fix the crashing and quest bugs. I doubt we'll see any balance related changes for a little while.

Looking at the 1.0.1.5 thread their priorities are

Crashes
Game breaking quest bugs
Broken abilities
UI / Tutorial / Camping fixes

 

[Saduj]

Not that far in. Finished maybe a dozen quests or so. The only obvious bug I've seen so far is that one time I left home and my starting position on the world map was the nearby farm (this was 1st time on world map since completing the farm quest).

some chest ownership bugs

How is that supposed to work? Doesn't seem to have anything to do with whether or not someone is going to see you taking stuff. Sometimes you can loot containers that clearly belong to a nearby NPC and the game doesn't care. But then last night I was in a building where I killed everyone (they started it) and the game wouldn't let me loot the containers in the building without risking reputation. Wasn't sure if that's a bug or just stupid decision making.

 

[Sensuki]

In the beta I reported that when I killed people who should technically be the 'owner' of a chest, the chest was still owned. Logic Artists acknowledged it as a bug, however it's not surprising that those types of bugs are low priority.

 

[Zed]

DotA 2 does it as well

it's f2p though

 

[Tigranes]

Beta testing patches is not a problem, gamebreaking bugs are a problem.

I've seen almost no bugs, only a couple crashes, myself, but bugs are always a luck of the draw thing.

 

[Lhynn]

Goddamnit I want to keep playing this so bad, but feel like I'd be doing myself a favor to wait for a couple more patches to iron out bugs and add features/re-balance some things. How has the difficulty/balance/camping been working out in your playthrough, Lhynn?

Im wrecking shit without ever even suffering damage. Balance is fine.

 

[Sensuki]

You have to roll to steal the loot, and you may not get the loot and lose reputation with the owner's faction if you fail the check.

 

[Lhynn]

Sensuki why the fuck is the morale of my main character so low? it keeps going down for no reason, and it has a real impact on my statistics.

 

[Sensuki]

I think it's a bug, I saw something mentioned about it on the Steam forums. Mine has stayed at 4 for a while.