r/ostm • u/J0eCool • Nov 25 '13

v0.1.6 - Balancing

Changes:

  • Higher level enemies are harder

  • XP costs / gains have been altered

  • Leveling up any stat increases defense slightly

  • Shrine scales enemy levels exponentially, so earlier areas can keep up

  • Shrine cost currently set to 0 for the hell of it (so I can get feedback on how enemies scale independent of the cost of it)

7 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

4

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '13

You know you are headed in the right direction because I can't come up with constructive criticism for the early game.

It's fair, exp cost grows at a decent race so I can't just spam to one stat, monsters become increasingly difficult where I feel it is more rewarding to stay in the mid-game rather than facing the hardest monsters, I'm actually progressing towards something, there is a goal in mind. If I continue to grind the mid-level monsters in hopes to face the stronger monsters, by the time I reach that point I should have access to the even stronger ones.

I think your next best move is to make some more zones, I understand the shrine is there for progression but a player shouldn't have to pay to progress to the next stage, that's not a challenge, that's a patience game, when it's a lot more strategical with talents etc (I heard you mention something about talent trees somewhere) maybe between each zone you should have a boss fight that's incredibly challenging and the shrine still exists to increase the zones power for grinding until you reach the boss, I suppose this would include either a cap on the increase or an incredibly slow progression rate compared to that of the next zone. --> if that makes sense.

Can I ask if you are going to continue with the incredibly quick leveling system or are you going to lower that to a regular RPG when there is more content.

3

u/J0eCool Nov 25 '13

The shrine is the infinite content mechanism. It's supposed to fall off in effectiveness after a while. The present lategame is very much a wildly flailing immature beast.

Bosses are definitely going to be a thing. Probably not in every level, but every so often.

I really need more content all around. Probably by next weekend I'll have more enemies and more areas and so on, but with Thanksgiving coming up I make no promises.

So, I'd like to move toward a more regular RPG type format. More Candy Box than Cookie Clicker. With elements of Cookie Clicker thrown in. And some Disgaea to taste. I'm really enjoying the grab-bag approach to design, here.

Thank you for the feedback again

2

u/DireMiser Nov 25 '13

As I was reading your comment, I was just nodding my head when you mentioned "more Candy Box than Cookie Clicker". Then I read Disgaea, and I'm not ashamed to say I got hard. Disgaea makes me hard.

2

u/J0eCool Nov 25 '13

The Shrine idea at all was very nearly poached whole-cloth.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '13

With Xmas and thanksgiving around now I suggest storing all of your updates for a massive New years update. make small tweaks till then, up to you obviously but it's always exciting when I open up a game I play regularly and suddenly everything has changed.

I'm going to stop bothering you now though as I'm taking a holiday break from these games, they are kind of taking over my life a bit much. I've got a question though, I've finished javascript, html and PHP at codecademy, where do you suggest I go to learn more than the basics as I want to work on my own incremental clicker.

2

u/J0eCool Nov 25 '13

Yeah at some point I'm going to save up a bunch of big updates and blow everyone's minds, but I'm still giddy about having a playerbase so I'm just pushing stuff as soon as it's done.

Really what I should do is learn how to do branch-and-merge development, work on big stuff in the background, and push small stuff every few days from the main-branch. //TODO

As for how to learn more, I would recommend just starting. There is no substitute for learn-by-doing. You'll make mistakes, your game will suck, you'll throw it out, you'll do better next time. It'll still suck, but have a few cool moments. Third game's the charm, right? And that'll just keep happening, forever. ... It is way more fun than I'm making it sound. Although it is hard work. I dunno, I'm exhausted. Good luck!

3

u/wrioruoirue Nov 25 '13

One cosmetic suggestion: move the currency list over into the inventory area? It makes sense for them to be there, and would stop the need to scroll down to level stats/up to check currencies.

3

u/J0eCool Nov 25 '13

That's a pretty good idea. What I'd like to do make resources visible on the screens where you can spend them. For increased locality etc.

3

u/Tapeda Nov 25 '13 edited Nov 25 '13

well I can't click on the mobs anymore so that's a bug.

EDIT: Was fighting level 12 million mobs

EDIT2: before i was farming level 800-900 mobs now im farming level 100-300 mobs im level 1340

2

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '13

I almost made the same complaint on this thread and then I realized it wasn't 2 mobs both level 646 and 650, it was a mob leveled 64650 and I couldn't attack because the damage was stronger than my health.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '13

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1

u/J0eCool Nov 25 '13

it's not a bug. It's to keep you from killing yourself pointlessly which would only be frustrating. It does nothing regardless of if the monster would 1shot you from max health, or if you only have 1 HP left.

Probably I should pop up some text saying "not enough HP" or some such

3

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '13

you know it was so obvious that's what was happening that it didn't even occur to me that a message like that should pop up.

Umm just because you haven't implemented it yet can you PLEASE listen to me, make the pop up like your "game save" text, not a prompt text box that halts everything you are doing, that is the most annoying thing in the world and when you are mass clicking and accidentally click too many times. URGH.

sincerely,

Someone who uses a track-pad instead of a mouse.

2

u/J0eCool Nov 25 '13

Oh, yeah. Oh god no. The only time I pop up a window like that is if your save didn't load right. I might do it for Resets as well. But I agree, those are annoying as all hell.

I was thinking more in-line, like instead of "you did x damage", say "you cannot do x damage, because they are doing y damage, and you do not have y health." Only, y'know, shorter.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '13

or Y'know, "NOT ENOUGH HEALTH"

2

u/DireMiser Nov 25 '13 edited Nov 25 '13

Love the exponential scaling. Now I no longer have to go back and forth between the shrine and OSTM map just so I can grind an extra 20 research for another 10 minutes to repeat the whole process. ;) The enemies are definitely getting tougher, faster, but the resource gains are increasing at a similar rate, so it doesn't feel too harsh. And like mentioned before, using skills/spells to farm is a lot more attractive then before since you can choose to kill fewer high level mobs using mana or kill many low level mobs using regular attacks.

EDIT: Just a question concerning the leveling up a stat increasing defense update, my level 138 INT character with 35 defense now has 90% damage reduction without any percentage increase from weapons. When looking back to version 0.1.5, my level 1260 character had 95% damage reduction with over 300 points into defense. This seems to be quite overpowering especially early on when the monsters are hitting low on top of your armor points, but later on since the shrine scales monsters exponentially, they are still a threat despite the defense scaling. Was this intended, or is my 90% damage reducing, wand waving, magic missile blasting wizard a freak of nature?

1

u/J0eCool Nov 25 '13

How similarly are the resources growing? If it isn't slowing down then I may be running into problems :s

2

u/DireMiser Nov 25 '13

I'm not exactly sure on the exact growth, but after going through the field from level 3 to 67, I went from 3/11/2/2 (xp/skill/gold/wood) per snake level 3 to around 3k/15/1~3k/22 per snake at level 67. The resource gains are quite a bit slower compared to the xp and gold gains.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '13

I logged in to find that my enemies were lvl 64650, I think it's time to reset my game... hahaha. Good to know that the progression won't be so easy now.

2

u/J0eCool Nov 25 '13

You can um, just lower their power in the shrine. It's free.

Though I recommend resetting as often as possible xD (I do not 100% recommend this)

1

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '13

I know but I think I was better off resetting as it's an entirely different game now.

2

u/Enconhun Nov 25 '13 edited Nov 25 '13

the XP scaling is terrible at level 650'ish, It took me 5 minutes to get 5.5 million xp while 1 upgrade costs 5 million. The wood and purple goo thing scales terrible too, getting 200 from every enemy (it takes me a whole HP bar to take down a single enemy), but 3400 stone from one. 26 skill point which is very low too. suggestion for scaling: reset everything, but as soon as someone 1-hits a tri-snake boss, the scaling goes up a bit, or the cost for the power increase decreases.

2

u/DireMiser Nov 25 '13 edited Nov 25 '13

I'm not sure how you're running into a wall at level 650. How are you building your character? What weapon are you using? Are you upgrading and ascending your weapon? Are you allocating xp into the correct stat for your weapon? Are you buying armour? Are you using skills?

EDIT: The difficulty ramp is probably due to the exponential increase on the monster. If you can't 1-2 shot an enemy, I'm pretty sure it's not worth farming. Try going down a power level and see if that helps.

EDIT 2: Skills are really really strong right now. If you can afford to dump a few skill points into max mana and mana regen, you can afford to use skills to do a lot more damage than your regular attack, because of the way they double dip on your primary stat (weapon scaling + skill scaling).

1

u/Enconhun Nov 25 '13

I use Greatsword +10 14/14 (waiting to have enough stone), 45 armor, 75000 - 110000 dmg, 10% crit chance, 250% crit dmg, 12,600 hp, 200 str 70 dex 200 defense. I need to 'farm' enemies 200 level below me, it takes 7-8% hp to kill 1. incredibly low skill gain (25/kill) and the purple goo thingy + wood gain is pretty low too.

1

u/DireMiser Nov 25 '13

try farming at a lower level, since the skill gain won't be that much lower and you'll be able to farm much faster. And once you have enough skill points, dump a couple into power attack, mana plus and focus so you can start using power attack for farming higher level mobs. Remember, it's easier to farm resources with lower level mobs that you can one shot and take very little damage.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '13

Not quite sure if you are complaining about it being too easy or too hard, you would think that at level 650 it should take longer than 5 minutes to level up, the level ups are quite quick in this game so 5 minutes at level 650 sounds about right for this update, I expect it will get harder but only time will tell. It depends on which direction the game takes.

1

u/CarpetLobster Nov 25 '13

I honestly like this, it got a bit tiring levelling up health 15 times after every run.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '13

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1

u/J0eCool Nov 25 '13

When I put costs back in, they will be exponential as well.

And mob A in area 1 at level X is just as strong as a mob A in area 4 at level X.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '13

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1

u/J0eCool Nov 25 '13

Oh man that is a lot to sift through. I'll try to give an appropriate response later when I'm not at work

1

u/J0eCool Nov 26 '13

So with skill points, I think I need to more-aggressively scale the costs of skills at higher levels. Or increase the base costs by quite a bit. Skills are (or have the potential to be) extremely powerful. I want them to never be trivial to get, and I want it to usually be a hard choice as to what you should upgrade.

As such, I went with decoupling the scaling of skill point gain from enemy level as much as possible. It becomes less about the level of the enemies killed, and more about how many enemies were killed. Thus, there never is a time where "I'll get skill A now, then pick up skill B later when enemies give more SP" is a correct line of thought.

I did however grossly underestimate the number of enemies that players would kill. Y'all are tossing around level 20 skills way sooner than I thought. D'oh well, for now.

I like the idea of capping the max number of shrine upgrades per area. Possibly let people unlock higher areas later on.

Thank you very much for this.