#Worries regarding the game's identity moving ahead

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

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Hello all,
I've been around since EA launch day playing on and off and following with the game's updates quickly jumping in to test each release. I have a couple things I feel I have to express to the team.

I have a few concerns that have been bubbling up for a while, ever since the medigem & medikit rework and lately even more prominent ones after watching the Buried Below update trailer.

I have mixed feelings about the direction the game's been taking toward overall difficulty and consequences weighing on player decisions during realtime gameplay.

  1. Medigems were strictly used as currency to craft a limited supply of Medkits per run, directly rewarding keen and thorough exploration. This was (in my opinion) downgraded to just heals for finding the occasional Medigem pickup and the weight of said pickups being limited per cycle (enforcing careful resource management) pretty much reduced to nothing.

  2. Buried Below seems to bring a tutorial area (and testing grounds space?) into the mix, which would normally sound like a non-issue - what could possibly be bad about adding in an extra guiding hand for those that could use it? But please bear with me: What do you think happens to the novelty of trying things out there, realtime and with actual risk to your current run? What happens to the sense of rush you get by being victorious in your parry timing experiments and so on? In my mind these experiences also run the risk of getting neutered thanks to yet another safety measure being introduced as an option to the player. Players shouldn't be given the option to fail "safely" and indefinitely. They should be challenged and rewarded appropriately.

  3. Extraction being available from any shrine on the map also damages the whole "greater risk = greater reward" schtick that I thought the game was going for. What's the point of the whole extraction system if I just scavenge a couple things per run only to run back to my nearest shrine whenever I feel a slight itch?

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Word limit, to add to all this: I am not trying to bash on the game of course, just really worried we'll reach a point of every system in the game feeling too safe for it's own good. I know we are still in Early Access and this is all still prone to change, concerned nonetheless that Breaker is moving further and further away from what made me fall in love with Drifter in the first place. The sense of wonder, excitement due to discovering things by myself with so little explained and being rewarded for being bold. Qualities like these are gradually being sacrificed in order to make this new game less... unwelcoming or maybe uninviting to new audiences? If this direction doesn't work toward attracting more players and/or keeping them around longer, what will ultimately be left for those that stuck around BECAUSE of HLD's complete package? What happens when there's too little for a game to actively challenge you with? There is grace in getting to fall in mud as a kid and figuring out why you got dirty, even better... playing around with the dirt still on! We should be encouraged to FALL (fail!) in the mud, food for thought ^^

slow musk
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Thank you for sharing your concerns. I would love to hear if you still feel this way after the update is released.

  1. Extraction being available from any shrine on the map also damages the whole "greater risk = greater reward" schtick that I thought the game was going for. What's the point of the whole extraction system if I just scavenge a couple things per run only to run back to my nearest shrine whenever I feel a slight itch?

I can say pretty definitively that this has not been the case in our playtesting.

In our gamerant interview, I touch on this specifically (https://gamerant.com/interview-hyper-light-breaker-buried-below-update-rondo-maw/):

"Clark: We didn’t deep-six it entirely - you’ll use the old extraction pads after defeating all three Crowns in a Cycle. Games are a series of meaningful choices. “Should I extract now, or press my luck further?” is the core decision players should be making continuously throughout a cycle.

What we found was that by gatekeeping extraction in this fashion, we removed that choice - extraction required enough of a commitment to make it through the gatekeepers that folks didn’t really choose to press their luck."

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This all makes sense and I will definitely be giving the update a thorough go, as always 🙂 I know there's plenty of worry expressed here and to be fair, quite a bit not warranted since something tangible hasn't been released yet... but I'm still with Breaker for the long run! I sincerely hope the game does great and will be coming back here soon to do this all justice.

slow musk
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I would rather have folks passionately invested in the game than not 🙂 All good, I hope you enjoy it when it launches next week!

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UPDATE Leaving this here real quick, things are looking good, testing plenty out but will come back with my findings once I finish up at least one cycle. Already seeing tons of positives 👍

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UPDATE #2

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Finished my first cycle, game seems to have been overhauled in a bunch of areas. The difficulty adjusted, can safely say we are heading toward a great direction! I came across one cave, pretty well designed I like how it weaved perfectly into the rest of the terrain. The Maw bossfight also looks solid, only thing is I'd like a couple more attacks into it's moveset. Now that I think about it all bosses could use more attacks, keep the player from getting too complacent with their patterns. I like the new take on extractions although I'd welcome the addition of a way to see which shrines are used-up for extraction, maybe grayed-out on the map? The progression changes and mandatory gear wipes I feel were a huge step toward refreshing the game and amping-up replayability as well as game balance. All in all I can definitely say I'm not any more concerned about the game as I was before. If all major updates have this level of treatment as this one, things can only keep improving! Thank you team, great work!

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@slow musk Not sure if this is allowed, but pinging for your convenience whenever you got time to read up. Thank you again 🙂

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There are a couple more things that I feel could be improved come next (major?) update. Namely core things pertaining to the game's tone and feel. For one, I love how the basics like how the game plays are well-polished. Movement and overall inputs are pretty snappy and the game can get pretty crazy fun once you get used to it's gameplay. I would appreciate if the team focuses more resources into how the environment itself reacts to the player this time around. Like foliage - grass and bushes swaying dynamically by player movement and attacks, maybe even being cuttable and/or burnable by explosions? Stuff like this would help alleviate much of the game's stiffness, make the world more fun and believable to play in.