Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[BING XI LAO]

Providing more information about how certain games handle randomness: statistically I believe that the player missing 3 times with 70% chance to hit is extremely likely to happen at some point, as you know from playing Underrail. This does not really feel very good, so Dota 2 for example employs pseudo random distributions. Basically I believe the way it works is that every time you miss then your chance to succeed next time is raised by a certain amount, in such a manner that mathematically the chance to hit averages out to the value displayed on screen. A lot of other games employ similar strategies.

This is a very interesting subject. Humans are not very good at accepting randomness, this is why games commonly manipulate it.

Pseudo-random in dota2 is absolutely fucking infuriating, because you can't make decisions based on having 25% chance of the thing proccing. Instead you have a wildly varying chance based on much much it's procced recently, so you have to keep mental track of that to play optimally.

 

[Goromorg]

The best solution would be to change some feats or add a few specializations that can increase accuracy cap in certain circumstances.
E.g.: improve Snipe feat to raise acc. cap to 100% when target is not alerted, add a specialization to Ambush, that raises acc. cap by 1% per point if feat conditions are met.

 

[jewboy]

I am not going to claim that my rage against cooldowns is 100% rational, but I do think it is incredibly lazy game design that takes its inspiration entirely from WoW and MMOs in general. It make me wonder if the combat itself is like an MMO with tanks to soak up damage and glass canons and healers in the back just being ignored and where everything is based on 'aggro'. I do really want to try this game however at least briefly. Is there a character build or play style that would be able to entirely avoid the cooldown mechanic? I certainly don't mind avoiding psi abilities. It did seem like cooldowns were pretty much ubiquitous throughout, but that was just an initial impression.

 

[ciox]

I am not going to claim that my rage against cooldowns is 100% rational, but I do think it is incredibly lazy game design that takes its inspiration entirely from WoW and MMOs in general. It make me wonder if the combat itself is like an MMO with tanks to soak up damage and glass canons and healers in the back just being ignored and where everything is based on 'aggro'. I do really want to try this game however at least briefly. Is there a character build or play style that would be able to entirely avoid the cooldown mechanic? I certainly don't mind avoiding psi abilities. It did seem like cooldowns were pretty much ubiquitous throughout, but that was just an initial impression.

It's really not that bad, the unpleasant aspect of juggling many long cooldowns at once is there, but the turnbased mode makes it easier to deal with them and plan ahead. Kind of a necessary evil in an otherwise very great game.

To reduce your friction with cooldowns as much as possible, I'd just play as someone who uses shotguns/rifles and is focused on burst fire, that will avoid ability cooldowns.
To avoid cooldowns from healing, you can wear a regenerative vest that heals over time, there's no cooldown associated with that.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Can we please change the title of the thread to something else?

"The Incline Awakens" just reminds me of the fuck-awful Force Awakens, and Underrail is WAY to good to be associated with any such dross, even in a thread title link.

I propose Underrail: Rise of Incline
Or Underrail: the last of Incline

 

[ciox]

A small moment of silence, for the quality of infused leathers past.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I am not going to claim that my rage against cooldowns is 100% rational, but I do think it is incredibly lazy game design that takes its inspiration entirely from WoW and MMOs in general.

I know little about MMOs but WC3 had cooldowns and thus the MOBA genre for example got cooldowns from an RTS, not from WoW or MMOs.

It make me wonder if the combat itself is like an MMO with tanks to soak up damage and glass canons and healers in the back just being ignored and where everything is based on 'aggro'.

How could it be when you only control one combatant? And why on earth would cooldowns necessarily imply tank-healer-cannon-aggro stuff anyway?

 

[BING XI LAO]

And anyway, what's wrong with tank, healer, glass cannon paradigm anyway? That's pretty much how I play most RPGs, even IE games or Spiderweb games, with cooldowns or without.

Of course parties are going to have some characters more durable than others, and of course the more heavily armoured ones should go in front. And of course the healers are at their best healing the guy who has damage mitigation and takes most damage; and of course the feebler characters tend to have better offense, and of course ranged guys go at the back.... isn't Tank-Healer-Glasscannon totally inevitable and logical? The only thing you can do with it is try to add more nuance or elaboration.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Cooldowns work fine in Tales of Maj-eyal, but in that game there are no consumable items so CDs are the only limits on health items.

Underrail's "suspenders and a belt" style is overkill. If I can only use one health stim per encounter there's not much point to carrying 100 of them. Likewise, grenades are already limited by being uncommon, reasonably expensive, limited stack size, and competing for utility slot space--having a cooldown on top of all that is just crazy.

 

[Lord_Potato]

I don't get these invasions on Expedition camp.

After a brutal second attack which left 9 SEC soldiers dead, the third one was trivial. Mind you, I activated the turrets which protected my flank (don't have the skills to activate naga defender), but still... thr natives didn't even reach the trenches.

It seems like they don't grow in power in a linear fashion.

 

[Parabalus]

How the fuck else would you implement the combat system without cooldowns? Am I fucking missing something here?

The problem is that the current implemention of cooldowns is wonky, as shown by the two most overpowered builds: tin can with assault rifles and cave wizard. Burst is an unconditional attack with no cd in a setting where other builds have to work around cds on their abilities (cough, quick tinkering, cough). Except if they are cave wizards, who can just locus of control > mass enrage > go hide in a corner while the enemies all kill each other. What do cds matter if you don't need more than one loc to disable an entire enemy group, or can burst like there is no tomorrow?

Imo limiting the number of actions a user can perform in a turn not only by the action points, but also by action types would be better than cooldowns.

This is pretty disingenuous though - wizards have many cooldowns to manage and managing them is super fun, especially with TM.

Them being extremely OP is another matter and even distracts and cheapens from the above.

The psi hypo CD buff (6-->3), which wasn't even in the patch notes, is an example of recent bad balance changes. Before you used to be able to run out of PSI, having to e.g. hide or kite until it comes back up, now that's gone.

 

[HoboForEternity]

you fucking serbian madmen really got me with that music puzzle. shit is fucking crazy. i did figure it out in the end. after . . .almost 4 hours. . . .
mutagen, ok. dude's code, ok.

i spent 1 hour studying the music theory. okay. it's easy enough. the chiper is alot harder, especially figuring out how the chiper work, then ACTUALLY working on it. i also have to look a guide in the end because i can't figure one part:

Now, you may note that the octave key also contains "7" "1" and "4".

When you see a number one greater than one of the octave numbers, this means that we start out ABOVE that octave, but when we apply the leftward shift, we'll end up in the correct octave.

In other words, If our note was C in octave "7", and we shifted by 1, we would end up with B in Octave 6.

Why not simply call it octave 0, which is the second octave in my case? Because we're applying the shifts from octave 6 ("A"), NOT the shifts from octave 0 ("A" + "B").

i figured most of the thing until this shit. like okay, there is the first 3 digit of the keys indicate with octave the letter belong too. almost all the keys number are comprised of that 3 letters (420 for me! 420 fuck yes!) there are same amount of digit in the keys and in the encrypted message. that is the last thing i figured out. after that and the fact there are more numbers than just a combination of 4,2,0 stuck me.

i give up and finally use that guide.
https://gameplay.tips/guides/4814-underrail.html

i still don't understand the whole leftward shift shit but i do it just according to the guide. so yeah. the very first puzzle to actually have stumped me that hard. this puzzle is pure evil. you are fucking evil. i have several pages of crumpled paper thanks to this, and 4 hours of my life i will never get back.

 

[HoboForEternity]

my brain is fried now. i think i am gonna have dreams tonight about music sheets and other shit. anyway, if only i put this much effort into my career and education, i would be millionaire by now.

also to whoever genius who solved this shit on their own: i will e-lick your boots.

and the puzzle totally hurt my ego

 

[jewboy]

And anyway, what's wrong with tank, healer, glass cannon paradigm anyway? That's pretty much how I play most RPGs, even IE games or Spiderweb games, with cooldowns or without.

Of course parties are going to have some characters more durable than others, and of course the more heavily armoured ones should go in front. And of course the healers are at their best healing the guy who has damage mitigation and takes most damage; and of course the feebler characters tend to have better offense, and of course ranged guys go at the back.... isn't Tank-Healer-Glasscannon totally inevitable and logical? The only thing you can do with it is try to add more nuance or elaboration.

Well I find the overall dynamic rather dull and samey, but also what do you do when the AI just ignores your tank utterly and makes a beeline for the glass cannon just like human players? Being able to use that tank n spank strategy is often just a sign of bad AI. Try playing that way in BG2 with SCS. The enemy mage will attack your mage or your vulnerable character regardless of where you put them. Putting your 'tank' in front is still a good strategy but its value diminishes greatly and definitely cannot be abused like it is with the MMO aggro design that is built entirely around dumb enemy AI only targeting the one character who they are least able to harm.

As a rule it is not a good idea to make the player wait and cooldowns feel so arbitrary and just tacked on. It's a too easy way to balance the game by just changing the cooldown timer. If the attacks are too powerful to use at will then make them less powerful. Vancian magic where you have to rest after casting a certain number of spells is a kind of cooldown in a way but it plays very differently. Or maybe the problem is just that every single game I've played with cooldowns as a part of the combat system had truly awful combat. I've never seen a good/fun system designed with cooldowns. So I associate cooldowns with very bad game design in games like Dragon Age and WoW. I will give this game another try while trying to avoid cooldowns as much as possible at first.

How could it be when you only control one combatant? And why on earth would cooldowns necessarily imply tank-healer-cannon-aggro stuff anyway?

I know very little about this game except that it is an indie rpg that a lot of the codex seems to like. I've only been as far as character creation and saw all the cooldowns and it scared me off. I associate cooldowns with MMOs and MMO style combat because that is where they were first used in the RPG genre afaik. It seemed part of the streamlining and consolizing trend that has been demolishing the PC RPG genre for many years. Dragon Age also had them and that was some of the worst combat I've ever played. Although I loved MotB the cooldowns in that game, albeit outside of combat, were quite annoying to me as well.

 

[Latelistener]

I've read 100 pages just to discover that no one swapped this comic sans of a font with the old one yet.

 

[ItsChon]

I know very little about this game except that it is an indie rpg that a lot of the codex seems to like. I've only been as far as character creation and saw all the cooldowns and it scared me off. I associate cooldowns with MMOs and MMO style combat because that is where they were first used in the RPG genre afaik. It seemed part of the streamlining and consolizing trend that has been demolishing the PC RPG genre for many years. Dragon Age also had them and that was some of the worst combat I've ever played. Although I loved MotB the cooldowns in that game, albeit outside of combat, were quite annoying to me as well.

Just play it for a couple of hours. The character creation is very rich, true incline even greater than the SPECIAL system of Fallout, and the combat of the game is one of the best ever, cooldowns and all. I say this for you, as this game is truly one of the best RPGs ever made. Easily top 10-15.

 

[Tigranes]

basically it has cooldowns, but none of the other cancer that you are mentioning. so if cooldowns inherently is a no go, thats that. but your real q seems to be does it have all this other mmoy bullshit. the answer being, fuck no. its an extremely old school crpg... with cooldowns.

 

[Blackmill]

I am not going to claim that my rage against cooldowns is 100% rational, but I do think it is incredibly lazy game design that takes its inspiration entirely from WoW and MMOs in general. It make me wonder if the combat itself is like an MMO with tanks to soak up damage and glass canons and healers in the back just being ignored and where everything is based on 'aggro'. I do really want to try this game however at least briefly. Is there a character build or play style that would be able to entirely avoid the cooldown mechanic? I certainly don't mind avoiding psi abilities. It did seem like cooldowns were pretty much ubiquitous throughout, but that was just an initial impression.

How do you propose to incorporate powerful abilities without cooldowns? Some super strong ability shouldn't be usable every turn, and while you could enforce this without cooldowns (i.e. add a potentially lethal health cost), I would say cooldowns are the most simple and direct solution. Any other solution is just a convoluted approximation of the effect that cooldowns have.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[SenisterDenister]

I've read 100 pages just to discover that no one swapped this comic sans of a font with the old one yet.

I suppose one could install an older version from good old games and rip the font from that if one wanted to. The thought never occurred to me. That said I do miss the old font as I'm prone to not appreciate change.

 

[Fenix]

Underrail: The Game You Must Play Before You Die

 

[Sykar]

How the fuck else would you implement the combat system without cooldowns? Am I fucking missing something here?

The problem is that the current implemention of cooldowns is wonky, as shown by the two most overpowered builds: tin can with assault rifles and cave wizard. Burst is an unconditional attack with no cd in a setting where other builds have to work around cds on their abilities (cough, quick tinkering, cough). Except if they are cave wizards, who can just locus of control > mass enrage > go hide in a corner while the enemies all kill each other. What do cds matter if you don't need more than one loc to disable an entire enemy group, or can burst like there is no tomorrow?

Imo limiting the number of actions a user can perform in a turn not only by the action points, but also by action types would be better than cooldowns.

This is pretty disingenuous though - wizards have many cooldowns to manage and managing them is super fun, especially with TM.

Them being extremely OP is another matter and even distracts and cheapens from the above.

The psi hypo CD buff (6-->3), which wasn't even in the patch notes, is an example of recent bad balance changes. Before you used to be able to run out of PSI, having to e.g. hide or kite until it comes back up, now that's gone.

I would not say it is gone unless you have some series cost reduction, but it sure made it a whole lot easier now to keep it up.

 

[Parabalus]

I am not going to claim that my rage against cooldowns is 100% rational, but I do think it is incredibly lazy game design that takes its inspiration entirely from WoW and MMOs in general. It make me wonder if the combat itself is like an MMO with tanks to soak up damage and glass canons and healers in the back just being ignored and where everything is based on 'aggro'. I do really want to try this game however at least briefly. Is there a character build or play style that would be able to entirely avoid the cooldown mechanic? I certainly don't mind avoiding psi abilities. It did seem like cooldowns were pretty much ubiquitous throughout, but that was just an initial impression.

How do you propose to incorporate powerful abilities without cooldowns? Some super strong ability shouldn't be usable every turn, and while you could enforce this without cooldowns (i.e. add a potentially lethal health cost), I would say cooldowns are the most simple and direct solution. Any other solution is just a convoluted approximation of the effect that cooldowns have.

channeling/higher cost/penalty in next rounds/some resource cost that replenishes slowly like stamina or mana

Cooldowns are just mana on an individual ability basis.

 

[Tigranes]

Um... yeah duh cooldowns are just like mana if you remove the primary difference between the two

 

[Parabalus]

Um... yeah duh cooldowns are just like mana if you remove the primary difference between the two

That's the end result of adding multiple mana bars.