#Unavoidable damage from targeting is too punishing.

106 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

pulsar matrix
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While targeting itself is a powerful enemy behavior, it quickly overwhelm the player.

  • Positioning matters much less when targeting is too plentiful.
  • It is hard to tell what enemies will have targeting and which do not.
  • Some builds are disproportionately affected which hurts diversity. (For example, damage over time or elemental effect builds suffer more than direct damage builds with burst that can take down enemies when targeted before they attack.)

Suggestion: Mark enemies who will target the player on their next turn and restrict the targeting mechanic to a specific archetype of enemy.

uneven fern
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Yeah, I'd agree that the unavoidable damage is something I'm not sure I like yet. It feels like an entirely different game I have to learn. I do feel like it lessens movement and makes it difficult in a way I don't find as fun. I'm still trying to think about how I feel about it.

sterile bear
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I don't know how I feel about the unavoidable damage yet, but I 100% agree that at points it becomes near impossible to keep track of direct damage attack arrows going through multiple layered AOEs etc... becomes a bit of a nightmare trying to strategize and plan accordingly when the battlefield becomes a spaghetti mess

woeful igloo
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thanks for the notes - we're making a few tweaks, like changing some ranged inklings to melee inklings and reducing some battle counts on certain enemies, to hopefully polish this. Likely it's something we'll continue tuning over time, and we appreciate all the thoughts. Aiming to get a patch out later today or early tomorrow.

uneven fern
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Thanks so much!! I know you guys are probably busy as heck with this being launch week and all, so this is appreciated.

arctic sleet
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Another thing that'd be helpful is seeing how much incoming damage is direct targeted

haughty yew
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I would add that the pink arrows for unavoidable damage feel really disjointed from the polished aesthetic of the targeting "areas". Also some of the arrowheads get lost or covered up by other items (I'm thinking specifically of the circles that have little diamond embellishments) making it difficult to even see there was an arrow targeting you. So I find the unavoidable damage less fun, and the implementation ugly.

finite meadow
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Keeping track of damage sources is an issue for sure sometimes. I would suggest having it so if you hold ALT (which already shows you the outcome of damage from all sources to enemies) that it highlights all damage sources (arrows + AoE's) that are affecting you and make them visible through all other potential obstructions, so you can know where all this damage is coming from.

Also might help if doing this gave highlights around enemies that were visible through visual obstructions. Some enemies are big and can hide the smaller critters, which can further complicate knowing where your damage is coming from.

Edit: I'm still undecided if the actual notion of having unavoidable damage is good or bad. Forcing the player to not funnel all their build into DPS and take some survivability isn't a bad thing as long as it isn't clashing with the overall meta of the game, but it does punish some classes far more than others (just compare how much shield the average Weaver gets vs. the average Obelisk!)

calm pendant
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Basic enemies should not be doing unavoidable damage. You should be managing a maze of attacks, not just sitting there taking hit after hit after hit. This damage change was clearly poorly thought out before being implemented, if you want to keep it you need to change a lot of things.

stiff gale
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Unavoidable damage is overly punishing in solo gameplay. There should be less unavoidable damage in solo and it should scale based on number of people in your party. Where it is at right now, it feels really bad that sometimes your tactical and strategic decisions don't matter because there is no realistic way to deal with it.

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Edit: I get that the main focus of the game balance is on multiplayer. That's fine, but don't emphasize being able to play solo if it's not going to be truly supported.

merry lake
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There’s skills and items in the game that can mitigate damage. If all damage is avoidable then you would just stack damage since damage = ehp. I think having some early boosts for those weaker classes to mitigate damage might help you build your character engine.
Healing from the stat choices is also a short term way to survive but feels bad you’re missing out on stats, but I think it adds to the risk/reward decision making you can do.

haughty yew
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This is turn 2 of the first fight, this is stupid.

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tiny cradle
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Is it? I mean you do what you can to minimize the damage you take then you use subsequent fights (and if necessary shrine rewards) to try to recover your HP, that just feels like an intended part of the gameplay loop that HP is just a resource you're expected to lose and gain. Same thing can happen in monster train or slay the spire and lots of other turnbased roguelikes.

haughty yew
tiny cradle
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I mean sometimes fights go badly that's just how roguelikes are. There are definitely adjustments that could be made to some aspects of the way the game starts but bad RNG and bad decisions putting you in bad spots you have to try to recover from is a core conceit of the genre.

haughty yew
finite meadow
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The update that just came today was intended to address the early unavoidable damage. If the above screenshot is from post-update (which I assume it is), then I think it means there might be more required tuning of that. I've noticed Weaver can struggle early on for removing threats. Things like when you proc your 2nd ability to either focus or spread damage can be the difference between a bunch of low HP monsters and 1-2 full HP monsters.

I do feel that the early game should have less / none of this, as it punishes before you have the ability to open up your toolkit to make strategic choices.

haughty yew
finite meadow
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By contrast, if you play Clairvoyant, you have a source of shielding right from run start, which is a choice you can make that isn't just [kill enemies]

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I assumed it was, yeah.

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Another shot of first area, turn 2. By contrast though, I think I can get out of most of this.

image.png
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Sometimes it works out. 🙂

haughty yew
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yeah with 60 hp guys, the ones i spawned had 230 lol

finite meadow
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Were you playing ranked or unranked?

haughty yew
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ranked

finite meadow
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Ah, yeah, I can imagine that will compound the punishing aspects of it.

haughty yew
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I mean, its bronze 3, it shouldn't be that different. I played through silver 3 or whatever the highest in the betas were with all the classes

woeful igloo
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we'll be continuing to make changes, today's were just some smaller ones, that said in that battle you've appeared to both 'enraged' a few enemies and also picked a book mutator that adds attack

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in this case enrage mechanics should hopefully nudge you to try to finish them off, when possible, or key off those thresholds (not always possible of course!)

haughty yew
woeful igloo
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yeah that's actually a good point, looking at it more closely I think those needle units shouldn't necessarily get enrage

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that's probably one change for this week's patch, we have some exclusions, like that, on certain unit types

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going to make a note

shrewd vault
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I don't think unvoiable damage is an issue directly. Having to manage hp is part of roguelikes imo. Getting chipped forces you to adapt more and that is a good thing. HP is a resource you have to utilize. Being full HP all run is not really a roguelike experience.
That said it seems to be in a state, where it needs more thought. I really like the ones from bosses or fights you let go on for too long, but as many said swarms of monsters doing that sucks.
Ty for that patch!

gleaming path
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Imo unavoidable damage just feels cheap
Ultimately if you have a lot of enemies with AOE, one will inevitably hit you, and it feels way more fair that way
also as others have mentioned, it just makes gameplay less diverse by having less incentive to move or use DOT builds

rain rapids
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If anything I'd look at dots. Maybe making them proc before enemy action or bleed does or something in between.

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That's my only issue right now with dirext damage. It kicks dot builds more than any other

native dragon
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzkCf_q9qNw
I felt inspired to make a video discussing the direct damage and unavoidable screen-wide damage. Not a content creator, it's just me talking and using the collections tab, but I was playing at inkbound rank before main branch and the game now is how it was then!

That said I think unranked and low ranks are definitely too hard right now, so I'm glad to hear Avarem said they are looking into softening the blow.

sacred merlin
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Im just kinda curious why the solution needed the ranges on these things to be global,

certainly making them nearly the whole area, such that it becomes "unavoidable" when you are threatened by more than one at once, or when the arena shrinks would accomplish much the same thing without frustrating people quite as much?

At least then where you stand might affect how much "unavoidable" damage you take, even if you cant solve it all.

boreal tendon
raw flame
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or at least have the unavoidable damage be ranged based and scales to how far you are away. You'll still take damage, but you'll have a bit more control on the amount.

sacred merlin
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Distance based damage sounds kind it would worsen the problem of confusion over where damage is coming from

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With better tooltips, I could see having a specific enemy work that way as their gimmick though

gleaming path
# rain rapids If anything I'd look at dots. Maybe making them proc before enemy action or blee...

I'm not a huge fan of this solution as it's basically forcing DoT builds to be more like melee builds rather than increasing gameplay diversity. For example, an attrition build based around having a lot of movement while inflicting DoTs on enemies would not be viable with this. Instead all DoT builds would have to be functionally the same, as the strategy is always to rush enemies as quickly as possible, rather than letting the player have any sort of control type builds

stiff gale
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I suspect part of the reason for changing the range to infinite was due to UI issues, where it would be really confusing and you'd get overwhelmed by lines and circles and indicators and all of that.

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That said, after thinking about it a bunch over the last couple of days, the changes I would implement would be - decrease (but not wholly eliminate) unavoidable damage; give enemies more AoE attacks (and possibly statuses); and change enemy AI so that they spread damage more evenly over the field. This way, you still have to deal with damage mitigation instead of ignoring it like in beta. However, it still rewards clever positioning and target prioritization, and furthermore gives the player more agency in how they take damage. Combined with more status effects, you could have things where you have to choose what you deal with.

glad shore
# stiff gale This is pretty much exactly how it was in the beta. I agree that (in beta) game...

This is exactly the issue right there. Everyone saying they should revert to how it was in the beta just haven't played enough to understand how it was, it needed to be changed.

I think a partial solution would be to revert some of the direct damage to AoE as you said, but have more varied AoE attacks instead.
Like zigzags and what not. Basically make it much harder to dodge it all, but still would be better than going full direct damage.

boreal tendon
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In the beta it was too easy to never take damage, I think most people agree that the game became boring pretty fast because of that. Now we are at the complete opposite, where there's so much damage pressure every turn that any type of slow play, setup, dots, are punished, so going for burst damage is always the best option.

In my opinion the biggest issue by far with the new system is that many enemies are able to target you the same turn they are spawned, and that shouldn't be a thing, or at least shouldn't be common. Small enemies that swarm you and attack every turn (like bats) should do something else in their first turn: aoe attack, buff themselves, or even better they should just stand still and cast a "Reposition" ability. Feels like some enemies are literally cheating when they spawn, immediately move away from the spawn point (why even show those on the ground at this point?), spread out forming a circle formation around you, AND also start attacking at the same time. And next turn they move again, spread again, attack again...

carmine lily
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I think the unavoidable damage does add some interesting aspects to target selection on your turns, and it encourages you to consider defenses at least a little rather than pure mobility, but sometimes you definitely get unlucky and have rounds where 6 or 7 spread out enemies have all synced up to do it at once, and there's nothing you can really do about it

sacred merlin
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I think the problem is how mobile players are vs the size of the arena honestly, because you can get to anywhere if you really want to the only way for enemies to be sure to hit you is for them to ignore your position entirely

boreal tendon
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It's always better to just kill everything every turn

sacred merlin
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enemy CC would also be an interesting way to hold the player down and keep them from just running away

boreal tendon
sacred merlin
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root and snare exist

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just underused

carmine lily
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There are some enemies in either garden or vengewood that keep you from moving

boreal tendon
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I mean, we need CC to stop enemies attacks once in a while

sacred merlin
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right but in the current implentation enemies dont need to move to hurt you

carmine lily
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Ah yeah, some more player CC options would be interesting

boreal tendon
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just give them a permanent CC immunity for the rest of the fight after they've been stunned/frozen/whatever once

sacred merlin
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I was trying to say the enemies should have better ability to CC the player in interesting ways, have them raise walls, for example

boreal tendon
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some enemies have so much HP, especially right after you kill the first boss, that it's almost impossible to kill them before they attack you

sacred merlin
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then maybe players would get hit by enemies without having the enemies just do damage by existing

boreal tendon
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not to mention those enemies that get permanent attack when they are hit, or when anything is killed, or mages that buff the whole arena...

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we need CC to stop those at least for a turn

sacred merlin
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well we cant give players CC without making the problem worse imo

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we got into this problem because players had too easy a time ignoring incoming threats

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so it would have to be alongside making things harder for the player in a different way

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probably by making it harder to OTK some enemies

boreal tendon
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Garden's Edge as second book is a run killer for a lot of builds. 5 bats spawn attacking you, extremely spread out around the arena, then there's a mage that buffs everyone whenever you cast 2 abilities. If you go for the bats another mage can spawn next turn and you are doomed, if you go for the mage the bats will get 1-3 damage each and you'll take 15 damage

sacred merlin
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Im not sure any of us have theright answers honestly, but I just think it will be a shame if the game doesnt care more about positioning

carmine lily
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Yeah, the only class that can really deal with that easily is Obelisk with their 3. Or the global damage lightning storm upgrade

boreal tendon
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Claire I'm pretty sure they care about positioning, just the fact that the game changed so much from previous iterations goes to show the devs aren't afraid to try new things

carmine lily
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I do think the idea of some enemies doing the targeted attacks is really interest from a target prioritization standpoint though. I'm sure the devs will find a good balance, the game is very promising so far, and that's the point of early access

sacred merlin
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I said more, im aware it cares!

boreal tendon
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It just so happens that right now we are in a rough iteration

carmine lily
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We're getting beat up by hordes of bats so that players on official release don't 😂

sacred merlin
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I wasnt trying to claim anything about the devs

boreal tendon
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like hiding behind a rock or something

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that would be cool

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also every arena being a big empty circle surrounded by goop isn't too interesting

boreal tendon
uneven fern
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this is battle 1 please help me god

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carmine lily
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At least you're magma miner, this is probably doable if you jump and hit the 4 enemies in the top, and line up your bonks

knotty vine
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Should mitigate like 15 or 20 damage

boreal tendon
knotty vine
carmine lily
boreal tendon
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I think Tip said it's the first battle in the run, you don't get to have that 👀

carmine lily
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This is why I don't do promenade first book

knotty vine
halcyon wing
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I think there's an overabundance of GIANT circle AoEs and not enough of pretty much anything else. If some/most of the direct damage was replaced with thin line AoEs (similar to many of the player abilities) it would provide opportunity to avoid damage while still not being too easy.

carmine lily
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I'm bad with names 😂

knotty vine
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Is ok lol

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Just confusin

uneven fern
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Thanks for the advice. Was able to mitigate most of the damage. Went on to win that run, but it was a funny way of making the point that, uh, unfortunately unavoidable damage can lead into some harsh situations for the player very early on. 😛

knotty vine
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It's mostly a puzzling type of combat

frail rune
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I'm just throwing this out there but I think the game could use terrain interactions. I was extremely disappointed to hide my dude behind a rare rock in the arena only for the little boomers to clip through it and still hit me. I think an interesting way to incentivize movement is to implement line of sight and elevation into the combat encounters. So enemies and potentially players as well can't hit each other on different elevations and such.

Also we get to say this: