View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0006063 | Valley 1 | Suggestion - Enemy Ideas | Feb 22, 2012 8:55 am | Feb 22, 2012 11:25 am | |
| Reporter | Bluddy | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | closed | Resolution | won't fix | ||
| Product Version | 0.579 | ||||
| Summary | 0006063: Some annoying enemies | ||||
| Description | The rhinos are annoying but manageable, since you just pass them. But the eagles are unbearable IMO. I don't ever want to go into the forests, which is a shame. Most of the areas are so enjoyable, but the forests are really ruined by the multitude of things flying at you at any moment. It's ok to have dangerous enemies, but these guys don't give you time to rest between handling enemies. The key here I think is that in order to explore the environment, you need to be able to have periods of respite and periods of fighting. You need to feel like you can clear a space for yourself; that you can come across the occasional enemies and figure out tactics to take them out. These are big, wide areas, and to have to constantly dodge attacks is too much -- the feeling of constantly dodging attacks is more appropriate for certain kinds of missions. Suggestion: both eagles and rhinos should be placid until you approach them within a certain distance, and then they'd lunge at you. This is consistent with the behavior of some enemies in many 2d scrollers. Higher tier monsters could attack you sooner ie. when you're further away. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | New | ||||
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I think it's important to have areas have different feels, etc. Having flat consistency of "periods of rest and periods of danger" throughout the game tends to over homogenize. And honestly with the eagles, I've not found them particularly troublesome of late, given they tend to spawn very few of them since the new seeding logic, instead having many other things. Anyhow, to further address your concern, a lot of what you're worried about with volume of a single kind of enemy will naturally take care of itself as we add more enemies to each region type. So in a very real way, most of the time your wish is going to be granted anyhow just as a natural part of moving toward 1.0. :) |
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Just to explain the problem with eagles and rhinos, they really reduce the options you have in terms of jumping and attacking. You HAVE to jump when they attack you, and they're too fast to do anything else with. Taking sand burrowers as an example, I can bounce around them, I can follow them and snipe them, I can hit them from above, from a diagonal, or I can dodge them and then leave them alone. With eagles, I must dodge when they attack, and they're too fast for me to do anything but get maybe one shot in. I have no options -- they're like environmental attacks. This is much less fun. What would be more enjoyable is to have them have some other behavior by default, and then swoop fast as part of a specific attack. |
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What you're describing aren't problems, though -- it's personal preference. If ALL the enemies behaved in that way, it would be a problem. But as it stands, I firmly believe there is no problem here. The eagles and rhinos aren't meant to be interesting on their own. They are meant to be interesting in combination with other enemies. When you have to jump because of a rhino alone, that's only so interesting, sure. But when you have to jump because of a rhino, and you're also trying to dodge the shots from an esper, that's a lot more interesting. Eagles are basically Buzzy Beetles from mario games, just moving a bit faster. Or albatrosses from mario 2, which move about this fast. Rhinos are like any number of enemies in many different platformers: those big blue brute guys in DKC come most readily to mind, but there are just countless others. Having enemies that force your to dodge or do a single tactic of whatever sort is absolutely fine and in fact a core part of most platformers: there is only one way to kill most enemies in mario games, aside from using a few environmental things like kicking a koopa shell into them. But that supposes that you have a koopa shell, which implies multiple sorts of enemies together. And that's what I mean by having things combine. If Mario 1 was just Goombas in every level, nothing else, and buzzy beetles in every level, nothing else, that would be a big problem and a horrendously un-fun game, right? But having those exact same enemies, when combined in a variety of interesting ways with one another and with varying environments, are really valid and interesting. The only problem with eagles and rhinos is that we don't yet have enough else going on to complement them yet. You're a super insightful guy, and you've had an enormous impact on this game in the second phase of beta -- more than perhaps any other player, perhaps. But in this case, while I think you are correct in identifying the problem (eagles and rhinos in abundance are not that fun), I think your identification of possible solutions is off. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 22, 2012 8:55 am | Bluddy | New Issue | |
| Feb 22, 2012 9:00 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Internal Weight | => New |
| Feb 22, 2012 9:00 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0019548 | |
| Feb 22, 2012 9:00 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => closed |
| Feb 22, 2012 9:00 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Feb 22, 2012 9:00 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => won't fix |
| Feb 22, 2012 11:15 am | Bluddy | Note Added: 0019557 | |
| Feb 22, 2012 11:25 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0019559 |
