@action -- Thanks for the feedback, but I don't really get some of it... sounds to me kind of like you have auto brightness on or very low and aren't really able to see the game as its supposed to be seen. For example, the cooldown bars are green, and turn red when they are used and recharging. Health turns yellow, then red when it gets low. The glass table in the Office has a white shine over it to make it visible (though by the very nature of glass, it is a little bit darker). As for the health bars over enemies, we felt it took away some of the immersion of the game when there are too many things cluttered up, especially considering that sometimes there are 30+ bugs on screen at once... thats a lot of health bars. And if they fade out then its not of much use unless you can memorize which bugs had which health bar In regards to difficulty, we are certainly open to feedback! However, there is definitely a fine line when dealing with endless based games. I know some people may expect to last until like round 30 on their first try, but in this type of game we want to make sure that there is room to grow and stuff to learn the more you play it. The main thing we gathered from beta was that although it may be difficult at first, it is easy to figure out how to do better and to improve your score over time. I guess we feel that the difficulty only becomes a problem if it gets frustrating and you no longer know how to do any better. What are other peoples' thoughts on difficulty so far? Do you feel like you will improve the more you play, or that it is just flat out too hard and you have "hit a wall"?
Hit a wall. I am playing easy and I usually make it to 17 ish and it's a slaughter. I tried normal and hard. Went straight back to easy. Fun as hell though!
I think it is durned near perfect. I've certainly ben overrun, squashed, mauled, bashed, mashed and generally pounded, and I've hit several full stops that seemed like walls in only a few hours of play, but at the same time, it gets easier with every playthrough, and I constantly have the feeling you describe, that every minute of play nets me a few more tricks and insights, and that the next game will go better. To sum up, it is damn difficult, but in a very good and rewarding way. Had it not been, every new conquest and advancement would not feel as good. What I do wish for, however, since the relative difficulty if the game IS high, and since I want it to stay that way, are some more persistent elements. The game suffers (lightly) from the old RTS conundrum: you build and buy and evolve, all in the spirit of persistence and the illusion of accomplishment, and once the map is done (in this case, once you've been brought to yer knees), it is all gone.
Wait a second... round 17 is pretty good! I would consider anyone who can make it to round 20+ to be close to an expert. @ Ayjona -- I definitely understand... but our concern with more persistent stats is that the leader boards will then become more about who has played the longest, instead of who actually has the most skill. Right now of course playing longer nets you new equipment to use, but if we add in persistent stat buffs it could skew it too far in the favor of those who simply put in more time. I will bring up for discussion the possibility of cumulative, minor stat buffs with the team though and let you know what we decide
Great game - a bit too hard I would have to agree that the difficulty is a bit too high. I can not seem to get past level 17 on easy no matter what i try. Has ANYONE managed to finish ANY environment all the way through to level 20? Strategies? Spreading it around among all bugs doesn't seem to work, simply powering up one bug (spider) and upgrading towers doesn't seem to work - you just end up overwhelmed either way. Had you guys already considered incorporating the following: - arrow indicators for bugs or food, similar to the base arrow? - ability for bug to eat food immediately or bring back to replenish base? - making food drops more "constant"? (I'll occasionally go several levels without seeing ANY food, which makes later stages seem impossible) Alright, enough bitching, though. Really like the game. Congratulations. K-
Next? What's the next map after the office? & how many levels do I have to finish the office map in order to reach it? (grenades would be nice in a update?)
I'll play around with brighntness. Sometimes game has gamma option, I think DOOM has one, so that if you play on train, at home or office you can adjust brightness based on abient light. As far as health bars. I realize that it will be very cluttered. Again, going from WoW experience, you can have "pop up" bar on top middle/right area of HUD similar to character health (which is on bottom). I am not concerned with tiny bugs, but knowing HP of big bugs would certainly help. So it will auto-pop up depending on what bug you grinding on top center/right portion of HUD. You change targe, bar on top changes and so on. Another thing, does day/night cycle have to be so fast? It seems day only broke and I can finally enjoy the game (night time is kinda annoying and hard to play), the night falls right away, and then there are few annoying seconds in between when it's complete darkness (it takes that light dude too long to get to u). Thanks for replying by the way.
Well, there's got to be some point when it gets hard. If you were getting to 27 regularly, would you complain that you can't get to 30?
Code: How many times have you played on easy mode? ( I'm playing on normal mode) yes I agree with you about getting overwhelmed I made it to level 17 & had to fight giant spiders, stop a cocoon from hatching, giant snails, etc.but I love it so far. Have you tried upgrading your equipment? The snipers tower really wrecks havoc when maxed out. Just keep trying you'll make it.
This, I truly understand. After the initial disappointment over the lack of persistence, it only took me a few minutes to see why bug loadouts, base turrets and leveled attributes could not be persistent, both for the sake of the leaderboards, and the fact that the whole game is based around starting each game anew and would require a major rebalancing, perhaps even a conceptual overhaul, to work otherwise. So I can't really say myself what I am looking for, which is always a bad trait in someone who is trying to help improve a game But some additional persistent elements, somehow, that walk the magical line between being purely visual, and unbalancing gameplay and scoreboards... *scratches head with Spider's swords* Perhaps simply a "neverending adventure" mode that, when activated, regardless of difficulty chosen, means that you start each game with most or all of everything you had when you died, in some all or some categories (perhaps the base always has to be rebuilt and equipment rebought, but stats stick around, etc). But, in order to not add time played to the leaderboards, it would be the equivalent of classic cheat modes from the 8-bit era, which means no high scores, and to avoid ruining the fun of obtaining the locked equipment and turrets, only unlocked equipment are available, and nothing is contributed to achievements, unlockables, etc. It might not be the perfect solution, but it would give us illusion of accomplishment suckers something to whittle away the hours with Noooes! Please spare us from all these MMO-WoW-style simplifications and overambitious and overfriendly UIs On a slightly more serious note, I like the fact that I have to find the food on my own.
I made it to round 27 after unlocking nearly everything, I think everyone is being unrealistic expecting to get to high rounds so fast. arrow indicators for food would be too easy, but would also clutter up the game. Use the teleporter ability for Ant to gain a zoomed out view of the world, though. I asked Jamie this, he said it was so that food storage or something was important... I'll look through my emails and find it. I asked Jamie this too, he said it was so upgrading your food storage mattered. When food does appear, though, three pieces will appear, so check the whole map for them. You never know when three fishes are hiding in the secret passageway (720 food). The yard level. You have to make it to level 7 to unlock the next level. For big bugs, I just remember how much I've attacked them, i.e. I've used Smash Em twice on this centipede, so Stampede will finish him off. I wish the fly came faster, too. But certain bugs and abilities only work during the day/night, so the game has to cycle fast. That sounds interesting. It'll be added just after the Platypus.
Thanks BJTC, glad you're enjoying the game! FYI before we deleting the highest scores, my best was Round 61 on Normal (171,000 points), and 35 on Hard (100,000 points) Of course I am a dev, but its definitely possible to get a very high score! Also keep in mind the game is still pretty new... I think we would have failed in balance if by the 2nd day of release people were already maxing out there scores. We will be looking at the difficulty though as more feedback comes in for sure. - yes we did consider arrows for food, but ultimately decided against it for a variety of game play reasons. We have plans for a new "Lookout Tower" turret which will do just this very thing though - Yep, we discussed this in beta and ultimately decided to keep it as is. It would actually end up altering game play quite a bit if you could eat anywhere. - Food spawns in groups every 2-3 minutes (randomly), and also in random amounts. This was a conscious decision to keep it a little more dynamic and to make food storage an important factor. Food does become less frequent as you progress, bc before we implemented this many beta testers were lasting well over 60 rounds, playing games that lasted several hours.... It actually was not fun to play without a challenge for that long. @ DaviddesJ -- Yes! Well put. Since you have to start over, we chose to "average" the game play time around 20-30 minutes so that it won't feel like a huge chore to build your characters back up.
i would love a praying mants as a future character! that would be totally beast, and i wouldn't mind iap. also bug alert: i'm not sure if this is a problem on your end, but when i play my music in the backround of the game, it works fine. however once i close out of the app, the music stops as well. i don't think thats supposed to happen? i have a 2nd gen itouch runing os 4.1...
yeaaa!!! ok for any future iaps i think that adding a campaign mode or coop multiplayer would be nice, although i highly doubt either will ever come. and also how do you guys complete some of the quests? i can never complete the quests where you have to kill a like a variety of different bugs, because they don't show up in the time it tkaes until the quest is over. also theres a quest where you have to find like one hero scroll or something and idk what to do. there are a few othere quests that i forget, but i had no idea what to do
Jamie, it seems like a ton of people are dying on round 17. This is because there are two centipedes in this round, and most people only have enough abilities to finish off one. I implore you to make Assassin Bomb unlock at less XP. For most people, it'll be the only way to make it past this level.
The "assassin" quests and "hero scroll" quests both require you to actively explore and find what you need to kill/gather. The assassin quest the enemies will all be grouped together in one spot somewhere on the map... you can pause the game to see what you need to kill in order to complete the quest. For the history scrolls, somewhere on the map will spawn a scroll surrounded by enemies... all you have to do is pick up the scroll to complete the quest, but it might be easier to kill of the guards first. @ K?! -- I just checked out the wave... its actually 18 that has the centipedes. 17 has scorpions, roaches, and fleas. We very slightly toned down the spawn times on some of the enemies in the later waves. Nothing drastic, but it should help out a bit for those who are getting stuck. These minor difficulty tweaks will make it in this upcoming update. I know you've been championing for a quicker assassin bomb since beta but its not likely to happen. In fact, I never get assassin bomb. I use a variety of Beetle stuns + sniper turrets to pretty much own Centipedes. Superior Assassin ability is also amazing... it slows down time and allows you to cream some of the larger enemies before they can do much damage.
Might I make a suggestion to the developers regarding the difficulty... Look at Solomon's Boneyard in how they allow you to collect gold....regardless of if you die, your gold ALWAYS carries over allowing to you strategically buy certain powerups and also allowing to you choose which powerups to equip in the limited number of slots before each game. This is something that made Solomon's Boneyard very satisfying and addicting because it gave you more of an incentive to play and also it allows the player to powerup in a more overall way than having to start from scratch all the time and I feel this might be some type of solution for when they difficulty really gets high Just a thought...
Yeah but as the developers said, then people that play more would have a much better chance to be higher on the leaderboards rather than the leaderboards be based solely on skill. Anyway, I keep dying on about wave 5 on hard, what's the best way to go about it, leveling all three up or just focusing on one hero?
