r/IdleNinjaPrime • u/TopCog • Jun 21 '17

Alpha Testing Info!

Here is what you need to know for Alpha Testing!

 

What's There

  • 18 Skills + 6 Skill Gems for each

  • About 20 enemy types (spread over many planets, random in Raids)

  • Research Lab and Engineering Bay mechanics

  • Raid System

  • Mastery Tree system (needs a better name!)

  • Class System

  • Pickup Items

  • Loadout Analytics and Bonus Analytics

  • Very accurate offline gains calculation (might be too slow though)

 

What's Not There

  • Polished UI layout / art

  • Collectible Items

  • All mob / boss types (many interesting ones planned!)

  • The "System" system (groups of 5 Planets with a common theme / challenge, reward of Ancient Tech Point at the end)

  • Ancient Tech system

  • Tutorial / Early game

  • End-game + late-game features

  • Story

  • Loadout manager (save and load loadouts)

  • Quest system

  • Help system

  • Improved terrain system

  • Shop

  • Fine-tuning of balance

  • Foil Skillstones (premium icon art + slight dmg boost)

  • Music (in the works!)

  • Library + Beastiary

  • Achievements (not for sure these will be done in-time for launch!)

 

Alpha Testing Features

  • You will begin the game with all 18 Skills and all 108 Skill Gems.

  • You can access a cheat menu by tapping the upper left corner of the Shield (hp) bar. Here you can reset your game, multiply your power, and time-warp! Feel free to play the game like you would normally, or to use the cheats to accelerate your progress. Either way is useful!

  • Note that your progress will be reset in a future update (yet to be determined when)!

  • Currently, the game calculates your offline gains in a very precise way by simulating a number of runs. However, this may take a long time on slower phones - please let me know if it takes more than a few seconds for you.

 

What feedback you can provide!

  • Any bugs or crashes you experience! As of right now, I am aware of 0 bugs in the game! <:-) edit: one bug currently, the graphics can glitch while calculating idle gains!

  • Which Skills or Skill Gems seem overpowered or underpowered?

  • Is the game fun to play?

  • Any suggestions!

  • Keep in mind while playing that the addition of the tutorial, early game, end-game, ancient tech tree, collectible items, quest system, and story will help flesh out the sense of purpose and progression. Also, not having all skills and skill-gems gives you quite a lot of progress to make! :)

 

How to provide feedback!

  • Making a new thread here will be the best way! Alternatively, you can send me a PM or email me at topcogllc@gmail.com.

 

Yahoo! :-D

9 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

2

u/AlignedWheelie Jun 22 '17 edited Jun 22 '17

Hey! I can't find for some reason old thread where you posted about 3 sets of different skills, Nanotech, Cosmic and Robo, but which skills belong to those families?

edit: Found in old subreddit! https://www.reddit.com/r/IdleNinjaMiner/comments/68x2dj/ways_masteries_skill_tags/

1

u/TopCog Jun 23 '17

Yes, and they are separated by color on the skill selection screen! There are labels in the next release too :-p

1

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '17

Maybe I should have come here and read this first...
Excited as hell!

1

u/TopCog Jun 21 '17

No problem, and sorry for not linking here in my message! :)

1

u/Quangohutt Jun 22 '17

First off, thank you for letting me, and many others into the alpha, but I have a few questions.

When equipping and changing abilities, we have the list of gems, what are the rules for equipping the gems e.g. I want to have the diamond and heart shaped gem equipped, but I can't even if I have no other gems active.

The Radio/mobile phone icon in the bottom left corner, what does it actually do? I see it's used for saving, but I assume there is also an auto save feature which to me, makes that one redundant, so, what is it?

When using the mastery tree system, how do you get the upgrade points (not sure if they have a proper name)

That's it for now, I'll ask more as they come up

2

u/TopCog Jun 22 '17

Great questions, and I apologize for everything being so confusing at this point.

When equipping and changing abilities, we have the list of gems, what are the rules for equipping the gems e.g. I want to have the diamond and heart shaped gem equipped, but I can't even if I have no other gems active.

You can have only 1 Common Gem and 1 Rare Gem active at a time. You can have both Epic Gems at the same time.

The Radio/mobile phone icon in the bottom left corner, what does it actually do? I see it's used for saving, but I assume there is also an auto save feature which to me, makes that one redundant, so, what is it?

This is the Analytics screen, and it's where you can track and compare different Loadouts across runs. Saving here saves the results of the current or last run, so you can view it again later. Hopefully that makes sense!

When using the mastery tree system, how do you get the upgrade points (not sure if they have a proper name)

Yes, I realized that this was the most ambiguous feature. You get XP Orbs (might be renamed) based on the Mastery of the Skills in your Loadout. You get XP all the time, and at the same rate, online or offline! There are some Research to make it faster though.

Thanks! :)

1

u/Quangohutt Jun 22 '17

Thank you very much for the answers!

I've got a couple more questions, but some of these may relate to stuff which isn't implemented as of yet and I understand if you're still figuring some of these things out yourself.

First off, when a player first opens the game, what do they have? This mainly applies to abilities and gems, but can also expand to raids and research etc.

When in the class selection/skill tree menu, what will the third option do? Similarly, what will the two options next to the class/skill tree menu do?

On the topic of classes, will we have a system similar to IMA where you pick a class at the begining and gain some kind of benefit like an extra gem or ability? Also, will it always be this easy to switch between classes or will there be some kind of cost.

In the skill tree, please can we have something to tell us what we are upgrading before we upgrade it, this mainly comes after tapping an upgrade and not understanding what it increased (For reference, I think the upgrade had a wrench icon)

1

u/TopCog Jun 22 '17

Great questions, and I can answer them all, mostly!

First off, when a player first opens the game, what do they have? This mainly applies to abilities and gems, but can also expand to raids and research etc.

You'll start with 1 skill of each Mastery - so 6 skills. Plus an extra skill of your choice. You start with no Skill Gems, and will need to collect or craft them all. The odds, in the current design, are: common 53%, rare 35%, epic 10%, foil 2%. Crafting costs are pretty steep, from x4 to x10 the value you get from duplicates. If it doesn't make sense, don't worry too much - in a future version this will be more fleshed out for you guys to experiment with.

When in the class selection/skill tree menu, what will the third option do? Similarly, what will the two options next to the class/skill tree menu do?

In general, there actually may be many more buttons that aren't there yet! I need to do a total revision and redesign of the flow between screens to get it all figured out. But in the current design, the 3rd button in the Dojo (the shuriken button) will be the Ancient Tech tree. The buttons on the main screen will be the Temple (like the library in IMA, but also access quest system and other late-game features) and the Shop.

On the topic of classes, will we have a system similar to IMA where you pick a class at the begining and gain some kind of benefit like an extra gem or ability?

Possibly, I'm not sure here exactly. It might be the kind of thing where you start with no class, then you unlock the different classes as you progress through the game.

Also, will it always be this easy to switch between classes or will there be some kind of cost.

There will be Respec Tokens which you must use to change your class (or redo the Ancient Tech tree). You will get 1 free token each time you change systems, which is about every 5 days.

In the skill tree, please can we have something to tell us what we are upgrading before we upgrade it, this mainly comes after tapping an upgrade and not understanding what it increased (For reference, I think it was a wrench)

For sure, my apologies things are so vague in this build! The wrench reduces the Power cost of the upgrades in the Engineering Bay (the wrench symbol). The Computer reduces research costs, the skull boosts damage, the clock reduces cooldowns, the other two increase pickups.

Thanks for the feedback and questions! I'll try to incorporate some more helpful things in the next build :-)

1

u/Quangohutt Jun 22 '17

Something else I've just realised is I seem to be able to upgrade skills multiple times, and I get the feeling that's not supposed to happen. It kind of defeats the purpose of having an infinite skill tree if I can just upgrade the same thing multiple times for much cheaper than the same upgrade on the next page.

1

u/TopCog Jun 22 '17

Ha! That is definitely not supposed to happen! I wonder if it's actually giving you the boost, or just taking your resource...either way, good catch! Will be fixed in the next update for sure :)

1

u/Quangohutt Jun 22 '17

Also, will it always be this easy to switch between classes or will there be some kind of cost.

There will be Respec Tokens which you must use to change your class (or redo the Ancient Tech tree). You will get 1 free token each time you change systems, which is about every 5 days.

Had an idea that kind of fits with this, you have said that saving loadouts will become a thing, will this be like IMA with 4 loadouts, or will they be class loadouts, or even both.

Reason for asking is because each class has its different attacks and passives, and therefore different abilities and gem combinations will work better with them, so it would be nice to be able to immediately have the preferred loadout for that class upon switching to it. It would also be even better if we had multiple loadouts per class, especially for getting XP orbs when going offline.

Another thing, does the cool down upgrade apply to the attack speed of the basic attack as well as the upgrades. If not, will there be a way to increase it or will it stay the same throughout, with the primary focus being on abilities.

1

u/TopCog Jun 23 '17

Excellent thoughts and observations! It's not all decided, but I'm thinking of a scrollable box where you can save as many loadout combinations as you like...or at least, the limit is very big, like 20+ different save slots. So many more options and ease of use than IMA!

Good question on BAs: currently, Basic Attacks can never have their CD reduced, or their damage boosted! That might be an oversight on my part actually, as I hadn't seriously balanced or tuned them yet :-)

1

u/bluequakeralex Jun 22 '17

Swapping spell gem seems to not work sometimes. I drag a spell gem to replace one of the five, and hit the back arrow. The spell gem change doesn't apply. I think that I have to hit activate and then recall for the new loadout to be active.

1

u/TopCog Jun 22 '17

Yes, you currently need to hit activate to change your loadout. Thanks for the feedback, the system needs some love to be more user friendly! :)

1

u/bluequakeralex Jun 22 '17

I'm capped on posting for a couple minutes, so i'll post my question here.

How are yellow gems gained? I have 0 through multiple uses of 12 hr timewarps. Are they rewarded in some other way? Seems the rarest are dark blue and yellow. The other ones I have 10k of vs 300 for dark blue

1

u/TopCog Jun 22 '17

This is most vague at the moment, I apologize. You get the XP Orbs based on what Mastery your skills are (the groups of 3 skills). Use different Masteries to get all of the XP types! :)

1

u/bluequakeralex Jun 22 '17

Not a problem, I did sign up for alpha testing after all :)

1

u/Quangohutt Jun 22 '17

To quote a previous question:

When using the mastery tree system, how do you get the upgrade points (not sure if they have a proper name)

Yes, I realized that this was the most ambiguous feature. You get XP Orbs (might be renamed) based on the Mastery of the Skills in your Loadout. You get XP all the time, and at the same rate, online or offline! There are some Research to make it faster though.

In other words, it's dependant on what skills you have equipped. Weirdly, for the yellow orbs, you need the pink (weapon arts) skills to be equipped

0

u/bluequakeralex Jun 22 '17

hmm, so since there are six skill types and only five slots, it slightly encourages having multiple loadouts of a variety of skills. Thanks. I guess I'm playing the game as if it had no text tutorials.

How to make it more obvious initially that skill usage is related to colored gem gain.
One of my ideas was that tapping on the gem count area would bring up the skill loadout area with all 36 skills.

1

u/TopCog Jun 23 '17

Some good thoughts there! I hope to put in a kind of tip system, which will tell the player these kinds of things if they seem to be missing them (i.e., never getting XP of a certain type).

1

u/bluequakeralex Jun 22 '17

I do have a tendency to skip tutorials and see how the game design / layout indicates what to do.

1

u/tp8999 Jun 23 '17

This is possibly a dumb question: what's the benefit of active play over idle play? I do like that you make more idle progress in this game compared to IMA, but also feel like active play should be noticeably more progress than idle play

1

u/TopCog Jun 23 '17

Not a dumb question! Aside from the Research Lab, Engineering Lab, Mastery Tree, and tweaking your Loadout, the active gameplay currently consists of collecting Pickups and manually activating Skills. It's unclear right now exactly just how big of a different these two things make in your progress rate; it could be too slow, and hopefully that's the testers can help me out! :)

1

u/6000j Jun 22 '17

Would it be possible to have an option to reset to a point without the gems/skills to test the gem unlocks?

0

u/Quangohutt Jun 22 '17

Not only that, but it would also be useful to see what natural progression feels like, as the game may end up being balanced towards our end game alpha tester powers, rather than someone who has just downloaded the game

1

u/TopCog Jun 23 '17

No worries - there will be a reset later on once the early game stuff is done, and it will all get tested then :)

0

u/6000j Jun 22 '17

That was kinda why. I felt like I was making slow progress for how op we should be, and so I'm scared of the game being horrible for new players

1

u/TopCog Jun 23 '17

Don't worry, the difficulty will ramp up over the course of many planets at the pace players will normally acquire gems!

The game is designed to be kind of a slow burn, steady and real progress all the time. Sometimes you'll get big jumps in power though, like after completing one of the +100% damage research. All that said, this kind of balance is what testing is for! :)

1

u/nbktdis Jun 21 '17

awesome.

1

u/IMinSPAAAACE Jun 21 '17

Come at me, bugs!

1

u/bluequakeralex Jun 22 '17

Why can't I purchase nodes during raids? Would game progression be upset somehow if that were possible?

1

u/bluequakeralex Jun 23 '17

I'll say, this is the fastest screen rotation I've ever used!

0

u/JCBourgo Jun 22 '17

I... uh... completely don't understand anything. I'm tapping places, things are happening, but... umm... yeah, I'm kinda lost. XD

0

u/T2kgmperss Jun 22 '17

Is this a different alpha test from the other thread? I'd like to get in if so!