Development Info Underrail 2: Infusion Dev Log #9: New Combat System

[Feyd Rautha]

Love the atmosphere!

e: It sort of blends Diablo 1 and Doom 3?

 

[Stavrophore]

I find the lack of trust in Styg on this forum very disturbing. Let him cook, we haven't seen enough so far. Notice how hard the last encounter was with multiple enemies. If we could see less AP but also less enemies at once, then that could be balanced. Gone will be the days of emporion shopping mall and 20 enemies that aggro you at once. The encounter design might also change with more spreadout characters, instead of these tightly packed clusters that worked well on the first strike/alpha mechanics. More movement and stealth maybe?

If Styg left original systems from UR in place, many people would complain that the game is too samey as the first one. You can't please all people.

 

[Maxie]

I find the lack of trust in Styg on this forum very disturbing. Let him cook, we haven't seen enough so far. Notice how hard the last encounter was with multiple enemies. If we could see less AP but also less enemies at once, then that could be balanced. Gone will be the days of emporion shopping mall and 20 enemies that aggro you at once. The encounter design might also change with more spreadout characters, instead of these tightly packed clusters that worked well on the first strike/alpha mechanics. More movement and stealth maybe?

If Styg left original systems from UR in place, many people would complain that the game is too samey as the first one. You can't please all people.

Styg has been consistently letting us down since Underrail 1.0

 

[Fedora Master]

I find the lack of trust in Styg on this forum very disturbing. Let him cook, we haven't seen enough so far. Notice how hard the last encounter was with multiple enemies. If we could see less AP but also less enemies at once, then that could be balanced. Gone will be the days of emporion shopping mall and 20 enemies that aggro you at once. The encounter design might also change with more spreadout characters, instead of these tightly packed clusters that worked well on the first strike/alpha mechanics. More movement and stealth maybe?

If Styg left original systems from UR in place, many people would complain that the game is too samey as the first one. You can't please all people.

Styg has been consistently letting us down since Underrail 1.0

Are you insinuating that you actually played Underrail?

 

[The people of Duckburg]

I find the lack of trust in Styg on this forum very disturbing.

He has done good in the past, but I'm not going to worship him. He's made poor design decisions in the past, too. And even if he hadn't, humans aren't infallible. It certainly isn't unheard of for sequels to great games to end up worse, especially if the devs decide to reinvent the wheel. That I'm willing to give the combat system a chance even though he's changed it for one that I generally don't enjoy should show that there's goodwill here.

If Styg left original systems from UR in place, many people would complain that the game is too samey as the first one. You can't please all people.

Would they? I doubt it. I don't remember ever hearing anyone say that the turn based combat should be replaced. Adjusted or rebalanced, sure, but not replaced. There are many ways to expand upon a game while keeping the core combat. The new interactivity, enemy type, gear, crafting and so on that we've seen would have worked just fine with turn based combat, after all.

 

[Oreshnik Missile]

The game's developer disagrees with you. Even when I played Tin Can I still pretty much had to either kill or lock down every enemy the instant they came into range. The thread regulars also commonly tell everyone to play stealth regardless of build in order to guarantee first strikes.

Sounds like you didn't get to quad SS regen vest tin can, which only needs to take certain enemies out fast, the rest can be mocked at leisure. And if your character wears metal armour, then sneaking is either to dodge combats entirely (which I do on occasions because sneaking with noise manipulation is fun) or in rare cases where the metal armour doesn't help, like against thought controllers (I can't remember, but I think I may have done that versus the Serpentborn Temple).

 

[Hydro]

I find the lack of trust in Styg on this forum very disturbing.

Good thing is he doesn’t care

 

[Rieser]

Underrail is fucking great and so I will simply wait and see how this turns out rather than sperg (which is what I feel like doing).

 

[InD_ImaginE]

I am not sure how will the Roguelike combat works with how highly lethal everything in Underrail is.

Getting slowed down/using a slow action in RL most of the times equal getting instagibbed by enemy doing 3 actions at once to you. Made even worse against multiple enemies.

Won't be an issue late game but early game would be awful. I am not sure if it solves the Alpha strike problem too. Like for slow characters now it is even MORE important to Alpha Strike

 

[lvl 2 Blue Slime]

I thought Infusion was an expansion. It's now a sequel?

 

[luj1]

If it aint broken, don't fix it. The combat in Underrail was excellent

 

[luj1]

I am not sure how will the Roguelike combat works

It does sound a little like ToME combat (which was amazing). But let's see

 

[Stavrophore]

I find the lack of trust in Styg on this forum very disturbing.

Good thing is he doesn’t care

Being too much of a pleb pleaser will do no good to any smart game dev.

 

[Oreshnik Missile]

Underrail was already THE rpg, for me. Everything else has some basic flaw, while Underrail is exceptional in all aspects.

Spoiler

Planescape, Kotor - cool vibes but the gameplay is too easy and simple.
Jeff Vogel games - great setting and exploration, but a bit crude with lots of trash combat, also ugly.
Infinity Engine games - played them to death many years ago.
Dark Sun - tried to play it, but it's crude and clunky. Do you really have to right click twice to get the right cursor to speak to someone and if you click the wrong number of times, you shoot arrows at them instead?
AoD - ruined by the gratuitous 3D camera. I don't play 3D games, should have been 2D.
Colony Ship - exposed and discredited by Beans000
BG3, Kingmaker - retarded gay slop. If you enjoyed these, an hero immediately.

Can't even think of many other RPGs, frankly, the genre is dog shit apart from Underrail.

Oh and there's Fallout 1/2. Basically Underrail but annoying antiquated UI, a setting that is vastly less interesting and original, and extremely simplistic gameplay, and far simpler and more limited exploration, compared to Underrail.

Now that Underrail exists, there is no reason for other RPGs to exist.

And now in astonishing further incline, Underrail 2 is going to rape the TB-tard safe spacers who shit and piss themselves in an autistic fit if more than one thing happens on screen at the same time. BASED BASED BASED BASED BASED


RtwP won in the end.

 

[Hydro]

Yep, I’m quite hyped for the new combat mechanics. TB while being generally ok (a lesser evil I’d say) always stroke me as something very abstract and unrealistic i.e. it’s impossible to conceptualize how a TB fight would look like in real time. For example I’m getting out of my cover to throw a grenade standing exposed before three enemies with guns facing me and nobody cares to shoot at me (overwatch aside). Yeah it’s an abstraction and all, but it’s kind of a bit dumb.

I guess this is what Styg thought too, hence this change. Obviously it’s an abstraction too, but more clever and rooted in reality having time as its primary dimension.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

It appears that this system is functionally real-time with pause, with pausing being automatic and mandatory at the conclusion of every player action. Is that correct?

 

[Stavrophore]

TB can work well if interruption mechanics is present, but i've only seen it in jagged alliance.

 

[buffalo bill]

Roguelike-inspired simultaneous turn-based sounds cool. People should play Jupiter Hell for a normal looking cRPG with this type of combat system—it plays very well.

I'm probably in the minority in strongly prefering the old Underrail graphics. The 3D character sprite looks generic to me. 2D >>> 3D basically always.

 

[Shaki]

Roguelike-inspired simultaneous turn-based sounds cool. People should play Jupiter Hell for a normal looking cRPG with this type of combat system—it plays very well.

I'm probably in the minority in strongly prefering the old Underrail graphics. The 3D character sprite looks generic to me. 2D >>> 3D basically always.

Jupiter Hell is great, but for me it plays more like a quirky action game, than a tacticool/RPG. I'm having hard time seeing its combat work well with Underrail's much deeper character building system, and with predetermined loot/enemies/locations.

 

[Ryzer]

Underrail is fucking great

In what universe?

 

[jackofshadows]

Styg was cooking some sort of rtwp system for UR too initially, maybe he will change his mind this time as well?

 

[Jrpgfan]

I don't know what to think of this.

My initial reaction is that it looks like he's overcomplicating and trying to fix something that didn't really need to be fixed.

I hope I'm wrong.

Game looks good though. Can't wait to play it in 2035.

 

[lukaszek]

so...rip movement as defense?

 

[Stavrophore]

Movement will be actually even more important now, as long as you will be able to move and shoot simultaneously, as we see in the video.

 

[BlackPlate]

I assume going all in on movement will be very viable, depending on map layout. What I hope is mid combat stealth will be a thing, instead of enemies locking in on your position at all times even in stealth. Death Stalkers have already shown how lethal that combo is, and in Underrail you already do something like that by picking off enemies that are out of LoS from others, but that requires a bit of janky finagling to accomplish.
Just imagine going for a kill, turning a corner and entering stealth, enemies advance upon your last known direction but you are already flanking them, real operator like.